


Your Shattered Reflection

by SometimesyougettheBear



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, BAMF Stiles, F/M, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Minor Character Death, Multi, Oral Sex, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-02-23 09:17:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 21
Words: 40,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2542280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SometimesyougettheBear/pseuds/SometimesyougettheBear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles had it all figured out, a normal life, a beautiful wife, and a safe home in the suburbs. He had run as far away from Beacon Hills as he could, trying desperately to forget everything about werewolves, magic and monsters. He swore he would never come back, but when a hasty message on his phone one night tells him his father is in danger,he is forced to return to Beacon Hills and face his past in order to forge  his own future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 2.5 children and a Red Brick House

**Now**  
Stiles was engrossed in front of the computer. Before him on the screen was a particularly tricky piece of code he had been trying to unravel. How could he make the script do exactly what he wanted it to? Would that make sense in the context of the function he wanted the computer to perform? His left hand tapped out a repetitive pattern on his knee, the only remnant of his adhd fueled childhood, as he worried at his lip. This piece of code wasn’t due till next Thursday bit he liked to keep on top of his work, liked to be days ahead of his perfectly bulleted point schedule. But it wasn’t just his punctual nature that kept him working, he loved his work. Loved the logic of a text of C++ or Java code, how each piece and word had a specific function that flowed in this fluid complexity. Lost in his programming, he could make and unmake worlds within his hands. Create in perfect control. He frowned, where was the bug in his code… why wasn’t the prosthetic leg bending at the right 90 degree angle….? A hand clapped on his back. He was jolted from his reverie to meet the smiling face of James. James, his colleague, was 5 feet 8, broad shouldered and brown haired, a typical all-American guy, with a sunny smile and a warm demeanor. 

“ Stiles, Stiles, my man, work day is over. Over. Wanna get a beer with me and let’s celebrate the weekend?”  
Stiles frowned slightly, “I almost had that last bit of code.”  
James countered easily, “ And perhaps taking a break will give you the time you need to get that breakthrough.”

Stiles groaned, “ I feel like I never have enough time lately, with Jessica and the engagement coming up, and all the preparations to move into a new apartment; it’s so hard to focus on my coding”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Stiles,” James replied, “everyone knows you’re the genius coder here. Most likely to work at google someday. Give it a rest. Come to the pub with me, you look like you need it”.

Stiles stretched his arms out in front of him and cracked his back. ‘ I can’t” he sighed, rubbing his fingers over his brow, “ I promised Jessica that I would get home early tonight and pick out wedding colors. Ugh.”

“You’re completely whipped, man. First she has you picking engagement colors and what next, you’ll be helping her go dress shopping and all that? Women are trouble.”

Stiles chuckled at the good-natured ribbing, “Well, what can I say, she has me wound tight around her little finger. Maybe I’ll come out with you on Saturday? how’s that?”

“Better.” James quipped.

Stiles smiled tiredly.

“and Stiles,” James added.

“yes?” Stiles was already rubbing his forehead again, feeling the beginnings of a migraine coming on.  
“ Don’t work too hard,” James advised.. kindly.

“thanks,” Stiles responded.

Stiles glanced at the clock. It was five. He had to get home. Those wedding invitations were not going to address themselves, and Jess would wonder what was holding him.

He felt the beginnings of a migraine coming on. He powered down his computer, picked up his briefcase and slung his arms into his warm hoodie, it was a little cool this afternoon in the Silicon Valley, but the sun was as brilliant as always. He swiped his badge to leave his office building and heading into the parking lot towards his black Subaru. He loved his four year old car. It was a sturdy car, an all wheel drive. When his palms felt the sweet touch of leather, it never failed to calm and settle him. For a minute, he rested his head against the steering wheel as he looked up at the building where he worked.  
The building was a hulking 10 floors of steel and glass, with the logo RoboCore in red across the top of the building. Next to his office building were other small stores, a sundae shop, a mom and pop sandwich shop, and a few apartment complexes. At 7 pm in the summer, the sun was still blooming with enduring brilliance; a few pedestrians were walking on the sidewalks. A mother pushed her squealing daughter in a blue and white stroller. Two teenagers loitered in the doorway of the sundae shop, eating from one banana split, their faces warm and open. The normality of the world around him calmed him, lulled him into a sense of complacency. His headache was turning into a full blown migraine. He figured he’d better get home before the migraine hit. He turned the key in the ignition, hearing the car rattle good-naturedly as he pulled his gear into drive and backed out of the parking lot.

Home was a two story duplex in Mountain View, a nice little suburb of San Francisco. The house was red brick and charming, the yard a dreamy suburban green. Down from his front porch, he could hear children playing and riding their scooters up and down the asphalt road in the late afternoon son.  
Once he got home, he knocked on the door, and when he heard no response, pulled the house keys from his wallet, and opened the door.  
Pop music hit him on full blast, “Girls just wanna have fun” Cyndi Lauper warbled”  
“Hey, Jess, I’m home, “he called out.  
His girlfriend responded, “Be there in a minute”.  
She rushed out of the kitchen to the door and swept him into a warm hug. as Stiles ‘s forehead brushed against her shoulder, he felt his breath even and his headache recede. Her strawberry shampoo calmed him. He was continually in love with her beauty and her kindness. Her yellow, straight hair clung to his shoulder and brown eyes looked at him with warmth and kindness. She was built like a Grecian urn, am exquisite work of beauty and grace, with finely shaped features, a sharp nose, and thin red lips. Everything about her was dainty, even the way she moved her long fingers like the fluttering of a bird as she spoke. Whenever he looked at her, Stiles was always struck by how lucky he was to have her with him, to be found worthy enough to be loved by her.  
Jessica immediately took in his stiff pose, and the slight frown on his face,  


“Tough day at work was it? Przemysław” Jessica often used his polish name, as a term of endearment.  
Stiles pinched his nose, “Tricky piece of code” 

Jessica tutted sympathetically. One of the wonderful things about her was that she knew not to press or pry, she didn’t bother to reassure him with vague platitudes, like “it’ll be all right”, she simply sympathized with a tut or an encouraging smile, which was exactly what Stiles needed. Stiles hung up his coat in the coat closet and left his bag on the sofa in the living room.

“Have you started dinner already? Sorry I was late.”

“It’s ok, dear” Jessica answered.”I’m almost done with the steaks. Will you wash up the dishes after we’re done?”

“No problem” Stiles replied.

He climbed the stairs to his master bedroom and pulled off his loafers. 

And the phone rang.

And the name flashed which he never wanted to or expected to see again. A person he hadn’t heard from in 5 years, The very sight of those letters filled his stomach with a heart pounding anxiety, making the world spin out of control for a few moments. He closed his eyes and chanted under his breath, “No No No No. Not again. No.


	2. Echoes of the Past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one is pretty intense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for psychological abuse. PTSD. Flashbacks. Anyway, tell me what you think, my lovelies.

After the world stopped spinning, Stiles realized he had let the call go to voicemail. Very well, perhaps he could pretend that the call never happened and everything would be just fine. Then his phone vibrated softly. He gritted his teeth and opened the message labeled Scott.  
Scot wrote: “Hey Stiles, my main man, bro. look, I know you don’t really want to be bothered but your dad’s life is on the line. He got poisoned by a manticore and we need to remove the poison with a spell. Deaton’s doesn’t have enough juice. We need an extra powered battery. We need you. Your dad needs you Stiles. Don’t delete this message. Call me back, at least for old times sakes .”

And just like that, Stile’s perfect ordinary life came crashing down. 

**10 years ago**

On day 1, Stiles was defiant as he was led to the cage. “Trying to soften me up. bitch? I’ll never be betray my pack. He chuckled as the soldier roughly threw him into the cage. “Careful,” Stiles quipped, “It would be a shame to mess up this beautiful face.” Apparently the soldier didn’t like his humor, because he punched Stiles across the face. Hard. Stiles’s head whipped back. “ow, man, jeez, that time of the month again?”  
As he pushed Stiles into the cage, the man grinned, “In a few days you’ll be begging for mercy”  
Stiles’s brown eyes narrowed.  
Never, he promised. Never.

 

On day 2, Stiles was surprised no one had come to speak to him yet. Jeez, he guessed his captors knew nothing about hospitality. He lay alone with his own thoughts, taking stock of all his new pretty new bruises. Well, ok, maybe not pretty. But he liked to think they gave him a fearsome look. Perhaps he could play up that dark and mysteriously scarred angle right? right? Finally get Lydia to notice him now that Jackson was out of the picture?  
Sometime during the day, he guessed, he had no idea if it was day or night in that dank basement; someone pushed a plate of food through a small dog-sized door. Stiles crawled over to the door and yelled,” hey, bro, what’s up? What’s for lunch today? I hope it’s not meatloaf surprise.” But he got no response, just a hand slamming the door closed and locking it from the outside. Stiles sighed as he looked at the tasteless mush in front of him and so ended the second day.

 

On day 3, Stiles became restless. His mostly superficial wounds were healing and there was nothing to do in his prison. He knew they were trying to break him. solitary confinement and all. deprive a human of enough stimulation and they’ll go crazy. It was ok, he could beat this. He knew more about torture tactics than most people alive ( ok, he read all about it on Wikipedia. So what, Wikipedia was a great source!) He tried to keep his spirits up, chanting “we shall not be moved.” Hey at least he was being fed? Right? And he wondered where he was supposed to pee? Was it okay to go in the corner of the room?

 

By day 7, Stiles’s adhd was driving him up the walls. He was banging his head against the wall seventeen times a day. he had given into his need to pee in the left most corner of his cell. and he smelled pretty awful. The entire room smelled. He dreamt of simple things like a shower, or being able to see his father again. Imagined his warm bed. 

 

By day 12, the walls started to fall down him. The walls spoke to him, in a voice suspiciously like Jackson’s. They called him “stupid spaz” and loomed over him threateningly. Doors began appearing from thin air. He didn’t know what day or week it was, only this unrelenting agony and darkness. He talked to himself to pass the time. Recited Invictus and Hope is a thing with feathers/that perches in the soul. Recalled every strange and weird fact he knew. Did you know the world’s deepest postbox is in japan? Vladmir Nabokov, in between writing weird incestuous novels like Lolita was also an acclaimed lepidopterist who invented the smiley? The largest snowflake was fifteen cm? inches across. Toxoplasma gondii…..

 

**Day 15**  
Stiles was only eating maybe thrice a week now. Though he didn’t know that, he had no idea what time or day it was. He felt like he had endured eternity in one heartbeat. When he looked out of the corner of his vision, he saw his father. standing there with him, encouraging. “I Love you Stiles. Keep pushing kiddo”. He stood up shakily and tried to walk towards his father, but when he tried to put his arms around his dad, the image disappeared. Beyond embarrassment now, Stiles cried. 

 

**Day 18**  
Stiles’s beard had grown; he was unaware of the stench of his cell. The hunger had dwindled into a quiet weariness. He no longer rambled to himself or spoke really. It was too much energy. Instead he just sat and dreamed. 

 

**Day 35**  
The hunger increased, making it hard for him to sleep. He was losing memories and moments. What did his father look like? He tried to remember his mother’s voice and his dad’s warmth. and his best friend who was Sarah? Sam? 

**Day 45**  
He did not know how long he had been in the deep damp hole. Was there a world beyond this? He tried to break his head open on the wall. He wanted to die so badly. or maybe he was already dead… and this was his own personal hell… 

 

 **Day 95 **  
****By Day 95, The proud young teenager who had vowed to never break had deteriorated into a skeleton. His skin was translucent, his bones brittle and several scars marked his wrist where he’d tried to hurt himself to focus on anything but the emptiness. The prisoner had forgotten his name, and words were mostly beyond him. He could barely summon up the strength to move his head and lay in a pool of his own piss. Luckily, the guard walked by during one of the prisoner’s more lucid periods. When he heard the guard’s footsteps, something in the prisoner’s heart jolted. He summoned the energy he had left to crawl across the cobblestones of his basement prison, pressing his face in between the metal prison bars.  
“Please,” he begged, in a raspy unused voice, so soft the guard could barely hear it.  
“I’ll do anything. anything you want, just get me out of here. Please kill me if you want but I can’t do this anymore. Oh please. I don’t know what I did, but” the prisoner begged.. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

For the first time in three months, the cell door was opened. 

The prisoner babbled. Thank you so much.. thankyou.thankyouthankyouthankyou and collapsed on the floor.

The guard scooped the broken teenager who smelled of sweat, piss, shit and terror into his arms, reveling in the much lighter weight of the boy. 95 days of solitary confinement will take the weight off a kid.  
He pulled out a black walkie talkie from his pocket and spoke into it. “ Madam, Prisoner 00145 has broken in nicely. Should we commence phase 2?”  
“Yes,” the silky voice retorted, “I think the time is right”.


	3. And the walls come tumblin' down

_Now_

Stiles’s hands were shaking on the wheel as he drove on the interstate. Jessica’s words still rang in his head.

She had appeared to their room when he had not come down for dinner and found him curled up in fetal position in one corner of the room rocking slowly and muttering to himself. She told him later that when she went to put a hand on his shoulder, he had yelled and backed away from her hand like a cornered animal.  
“Don’t touch me,” he had begged, “please don’t touch me”  
Jessica had backed away and spoke softly, slowly, trying to calm Stiles down. “Hey, Stiles, love, I’m here. Calm down. I’m here. You’re safe.”

Apparently it had taken nearly twenty minutes for Stiles to come back to himself. When he realized where he was, his face burned red and he closed his eyes in shame.  
” You should never have had to see that,” Stiles said shakily.  
“Hey, Stiles, I love you. I have never seen you act like this before. This isn’t just about work is it?” Jessica asked.  
Stiles wanted to swallow his secret for as long as he could.  
“Sorry, Jess,” he apologized, “Just got some bad news and it kinda threw me for a loop. My dad is sick.”  
“Oh my God, “Jessica exclaimed, “that’s horrible. What is it? Is he going to be ok? Are you going down to Beacon Hills to see him?”  
“I have to. I’m going to go this weekend.” Stiles replied.  
“I’m coming with you,” Jessica asserted.  
“W-W-What?” Stiles exclaimed. “No. No you can’t come.”  
“What do you mean, Stiles? Just the thought of your father hurt has you in a near panic attack. I know he’s the only family you have left. I want to come Stiles. Let me help you.” Jessica explained.  
“It’s not a big deal,” Stiles backtracked, “I don’t really need you there. Don’t you have caterer’s visits and dress fittings to attend to? I’ll be home soon.”  
“And I can cancel all my appointments. We’re a unit Stiles. Don’t shut me out, “She moved to hug him.  
As soon as her arms enclosed around him, all Stiles could feel was  


_hands all around his bare skin. touching him where he didn’t want to touch. His skin exposed. a voice in his ear, smelled like cheap cigarettes, “Ready for this? Well, I guess you don’t really have a choice.”_  


“No,” Stiles swallowed, “pushing her arms away, don’t touch me. Please. Please stay away from me. Please.”  
Stiles snapped back to reality. Jessica was looking at him with a confused look on her face. Shame bloomed across his cheeks, spreading like a red flower from ear to ear, making his skin hot. He thought he had been doing so well. Take the right pills every day. Going through the motions. Trying not to think of what had happened 10 years ago.  
“I can explain.”  
He could see when the light went off in Jessica’s head. “Someone hurt you, didn’t they? What happened? Stiles, Talk to me.”  
A wave of fury rose up in Stiles. She had already seen him at his lowest. Why was she still prying? Still bothering him?  
“Look, I don’t want to talk right now. I just- I need some space.” Stiles stood up and walked to his white closet. Pulling out a few shirts and pants, along with his wallet, and drugs, he threw all his stuff haphazardly into a black suitcase. He picked up the suitcase and walked out the door.  
“ I’ll stay in a hotel and call you when I get back.”  
There were tears on Jessica’s face.  
“Look, Stiles, I’ll always love you. But I’m not sure I know who you are?”  
I’m not sure I know who you are….. Jessica’s voice rang out in Stiles’s head. It felt like he was losing everything. Like his perfect, safe world was crashing down. He took the left turn into Beacon Hills.

**10 years ago**  


“He’s useless to me,” the Wolf King Deucalion growled out, “I don’t know what you did to this boy, but he doesn’t even remember his name, forget about the true alpha who threatens my plan to take over the world of werewolves.”  


The prisoner crawled to the King’s feet.  
“Please,” he cowered, “please, I’m sorry I don’t remember anything. I’ll try really hard to figure it out Alpha,”

The King tried again.  
“What is your name, boy?”

The prisoner shuddered, and in the depths of his mind voices whispered, John Stilinski…… “It’s, It’s ummmm J-J-John?,” 

The King snarled in disgust, “Take him away”

 

“Not so fast, dear”, a tall woman wearing a dress of violet stood. Her hair was the color of straw and her eyes were two pieces of flinty blue glass, she walked with an elegant grace to the king. Her nose and lips, were perfectly formed, dainty and thin. Her beautiful features were marred only by a scar that crossed from the left corner of her eye to the bottom of her lip.  
“I could make him useful to you,” she offered.  
“ Not now, Elissa”  
“I could mold him into the perfect soldier, the perfect weapon for you to us,” she continued.  
The king barked out a laugh, “ How?”, he kicked at the prisoner’s bowed head, “ He’s scared out his mind. Thin and bony and weak. I wouldn’t accept him as a cupbearer, forget about as a soldier”

Undeterred, Elissa argued,  
“ But he has a spark of magic within him, that gives him power…”

“ And we all know that a Spark means nothing unless it’s cultivated, unless someone has the presence of mind to strive to grow the spark into a full grown flame,”

“I can do it, Alpha”, Elissa assured.  
“ Do as you wish, “ the Alpha shrugged, “ You can have him for one year and if there’s no progress, I’ll give him to my soldiers, see if they can find a use for him”

Elissa walked to the kneeling prisoner and slapped him across the face. “Get up,” she growled, “you’re with me now.”  
The prisoner tottered after her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No graphic torture here, just a slow exposition. The next chapter will be longer and more plotty. happy Halloween!


	4. Ignis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Need to know terms:  
> Kok- choke  
> Reles-Release  
> Noxum- messed with the Latin a bit, meant to signify darkness. In this fiction, the noxum or nox signifies average ordinary people who have no access to the world of magic  
> ignis-kind of took liberites with this latin too, meaning the ignited one. The ignis are those who have the power of magic, mages, witches, etc  
> Verum- Latin for truth. also means ( in my context) yes, it is true.  
> Domina Preceptio- A mages master. She or he has power over their lives, teaches them how to use their magic and basically guides them. Ergo why Stiles will not be using the Elissa's name, pretty much ever, except if gets in trouble. He will refer to her as Mi Domina. My Mistress.  
> exusia- kind of messed with some Greek in here. Exusia means power. It is the mages word for magic.

**10 years Ago**  
The first thing that came to him was his name.  
Stiles. Stiles. I am Stiles Stilinski.  
He drifted off to sleep again.

 

He could think for longer and longer moments of time. How did I get here?  
Will I be able to go home?

 

He noticed, the green energy surrounding him, soothing the worst of the aches inside of his soul. He poked at the energy shield around him and it trembled playfully. Go to sleep, Go to sleep, the words drifted by him.

He slept some more.

 

On the fifth day, Stiles woke up feeling better than he had felt in a long time. The overwhelming fear of the cell was still there, but he could think now. There were still large gaps in his memory, gaps he could not fill. But he remembered who he was and he was warm and comfortable. He couldn’t help smiling a little, the most he had smiled in a long time. It was strange how the littlest things could make one happy.

A woman was curled up in fetal position in a corner of his room, wearing a blue silk dress, her brown hair tied up into a bun. When he stirred, she woke up and fixed upon him the most startling gray eyes. 

“You’re awake,” she smiled, “I’ve been working hard to heal you for a week, so much damage had been done to your mind. It was really tricky.”

Stiles’s eyes overflowed with tears, “Thank you. I-I don’t know how to repay you.”

“Don’t worry about it. Mistress will see you now.”

“Who is the Mistress?” Stiles questioned.

“She brought you to me,” the girl answered.

Stiles remembered pain. a long thin, manicured hand dragging him along the cobblestones walls. sharp words.

“Elissa,” the girl explained, “She a level 5 black star mage. She wants to see you. And you don’t keep a mage waiting for too long. Get dressed. There are some jeans and t-shirts in the drawer. I’ll be back in five minutes,” with that girl left the room.

Stiles quickly scrounged around for some better clothing than the pajamas he was wearing, as a feeling of trepidation curled up his spine.

What does she want with me? He wondered.

He felt himself swallow. But he was able to pull on some blue jeans, a white t-shirt. He figured the t-shirt that said “Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy” was not a great choice.

When he brown haired girl came back, he was toeing his feet into some sneakers which were a tad too small.

She looked at him for a moment, her beautiful brown eyes inscrutable depths of knowledge, then, with a sad smile, gestured for him to follow her.

He followed her down a cobblestone corridor, taking a few left turns and one right one. They walked through an unmarked door into a hallway lit only by scones of torches lining the wall. 

Jeez, Stiles thought, this is way too Cask of Amontillado for modern times. Does anyone have electric lights or like normal wood floors? What is this?

For once, Stiles was able to keep his mouth shut though. He had certainly learned that lesson.

Finally, the girl knocked on a heavy metal door. “He’s here, Ma’am”  
As the big metal door opened, the brown haired girl walked away.  
“Bye,” she said and waved. “Good Luck” she mouthed.  
Stiles entered the room.

The room was filled with a wooden bed, topped with a heavy blue bedspread. A bare blue rug covered the floor and a wooden desk faced the other side of the room. He searched with his eyes for anything distinctive that would tell him about who he was dealing with but found nothing.  
Also, he wondered, where was she? He thought she was already in the room.  
A hand tapped on his shoulder. Startled, he jumped, spinning around.’

He remembered her.  
The slap on the face. The perfect fingers. And now he filled in other details, the blonde hair, the heart-shaped face.

“Hello Stiles,” she greeted, “My name is Elissa, though you don’t need to know it. You will never use my name,”  
She sat on the desk chair and made herself comfortable.

“Shut the door,” Stiles shut the metal door quietly, feeling like he was backed into a trap.

“Do you know why I have brought you here, Stiles? Rescued you from being the plaything of the soldiers?”  
Stiles gulped, “No”  
“Because you have that ignis, within you, that flame, that spark. I’m going to teach you how to use it.”  
“Thank you?” Stiles questioned. He wondered, What do you want for this though?  
“Is that all the thanks I get?” Elissa stood up from her chair, moving so close to him, there was barely an inch in between their faces.

Stiles couldn’t help but reply, “I was wondering what your end-game was.”  
Elissa laughed, “My endgame? You are just this close”, here she took her index finger and thumb to and pinched at a bit of air,” this close to becoming a sex slave and you’re wondering what my angle is? You should be worried more about yourself. What are you thinking? Your friends will come for you? Scott, the true alpha, will find you?”

Stiles gasped in alarm, “How do you know?” and why doesn’t the King know then?  
“I can walk into your mind as easily as brushing my hair. I could kill you with one hand without even getting blood on my gown”

 _“Kok”_ she commanded, and made a fist.

Stiles felt his body rise off the ground, his feet dangles a foot off the floor. As she tightened her fist, the air was slowly crushed out of his lungs.  
He gasped, trying frantically to scratch at the invisible fingers clamped around his throat.

_“Reles”_

He fell down to the ground, gasping.  
“You know what you are, Stiles? Pathetic. Weak. So weak that you got captured by these bumbling fools. So pathetic, you lost your mind in what? 90 days in solitary confinement?” she snorted.  
“You have no power. no worth. You’re a stupid human burden to everyone around you,” she continued.  
Stiles began, “I know my friends have to be looking for me. They’ll find me. And I help them. I  
make plans, I –“

“Those friends who have never showed up for you? Should I send you to the soldiers and see whether your friends will save you from their rapes? Perhaps they’ll find you in another two years. But who knows how much of you will be left. Friends,” she snarled, “You mean those friends who left you to die in that cell? Would you like me to take you back there and see if they can do any better in another 90 days? ”

Stiles felt only fear, immense filling every inch of his being. Tears started to spread down his face, unheedingly.

“No, Please don’t send me back there,” he begged, kneeling on the floor.

“Then get up”, she charged, “Stop relying on stupid friends. There is no such thing as a friend, just a better disguised enemy. I can teach you how to become stronger, so powerful you won’t need friends. I can teach you how to become untouchable. I can keep you safe”

Stiles stood and tried to dry the tears on his face with the back of his arm.  
Elissa’s lips curved in a harsh smile.

“This has to be entered into freely. I cannot force you. I will ask you to swear an oath and after each sentence you must say “verum”. It is all up to you Stiles.”

Elissa began, _“Do you Stiles, want to leave your life of nox and become one of the ignis?”_

Stiles thought of how powerless he felt, deep in the cell, and the constant fear he could not shake.

_“Verum”_

_“Do you want to accept your droit and your true place and become one of the awakened ones?”_

_“Verum”_

_“Do you take me as your Dominus Preceptio, to guide you in the ways of exusia?_

Stiles took a deep breath, but by know all doubts had disappeared, he knew, in his bones that he needed the knowledge this woman hade.

_“Verum”_

Elissa pulled out a wide, golden needle from her right sleeve. It was about 3 inches long and an inch wide. It was carved over with words and symbols he couldn’t read, rendered in fine, tiny details.

“Give me your hand”, she commanded.

Stiles offered her his hand.  
She drove the needle down into his palm.

It hurt.  
Not only the pain of the needle, but he felt like fire had entered his veins, slowly welling from his hands and spreading throughout his body. He felt himself begin to shake. He noticed that a lot more blood was spilling from his palm than made sense for a pinprick.  
She dipped her index finger into the blood and turned his palm over. On the back of his palm she drew a five pointed star in his blood.  
He felt a flare of something inside him respond to this.  
Light from his hand illuminated the chamber. A quick flash and then it was gone.

Trying to catch his breath, Stiles asked, “What now?”

“Now,” Elissa raised an eyebrow, “We have to awaken you,”

**_Now_ **

Stiles entered Deaton’s clinic. He hated it here. Fucking stupid Deaton, he thought.  
He walked to the back room, his mind still easily recalling the route he’d walked down a hundred times.  
He knocked on the door.

There, lying on a plastic bed lay his father. Surrounding his father were Scott, Lydia, Isaac ,Derek, Peter, and Kira. He expected to walk in and rage. Ask them how they could let his father get caught up in their stupidity. But when he saw his father lying there, with his body so pale, barely moving, like a waxy dead thing. His voice caught in his throat, words were mired in his mind, stuck fast like quicksand.  
He pushed his terror away for a moment.

“What do you need me to do?”

Deacon pushed Stiles to stand in the center of a chalk circle.  
“Hold my hand and repeat after me, “He ordered.  
As Stiles chanted the words, he felt his magic awake from a long slumber and craw out of the depths like a dragon roused. He hated the feeling, the dizzying rush of power through his veins made him sick. Hated this. Hated it. But he needed his father. As soon as his father was well, he would put his magic back to sleep again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hehe. I just keep going like a chapter a day, I figure that I'll probably take more time between postings soon, I guess I'm just too excited here.  
> Anyway, this chapter features a lot of Latin words,( I don't take latin, got stuff of the internet). I also took a few liberties with the words because it was fun.  
> I'll deal with the Lexmagini, the mage's language and how it is kind of made of loan words and borrowed words with a weird structure later. Also, next chapter will not be for the faint of heart...


	5. Dark Night of the Soul ( La noche del oscura del alma)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is not for the faint of heart. There is a rape that happens in the italicized portion and I do not want to unintentionally trigger anyone. Please take care of yourselves.  
> Mi carissimi- my dear/heart/term of affection.

**10 years Ago**

Apparently awakening a mage was not an easy business. Elissa had tried everything, spells meant to draw out the spark within, deep breathing and relaxation exercises, threats and intimidation and nothing worked. Stiles was lying on the blue rug in her room, face sheathed in sweat. He had not eaten or slept more than a few snatches at a time for the past three days.  
“ Mi Domina”, he begged, “can I just get something to eat, please? Or even sleep for a few hours?”  
Elissa snarled, “We don’t have time to waste. Get up.”  
Elissa hit Stiles’s with another blast of bright red magic. , _“ Incediare”_ She screamed, pointing at his sleeve. Stiles’s T-shirt sleeve was caught by angry red flames. The flames soon spread from his sleeve to his shirt.  
Stiles screamed. Scratching at his skin. There is nothing that can compare to the feeling of being literally on fire. He felt the tang of magical flame, heat beyond anything he had ever felt in summer, the burn of a thousand suns on his skin, stripping the top layer of skin cells away. Rolling on the floor, he only hoped this agony would end.  
 _“Aquiare”_  
Just like that, the burn was soothed by cool water, putting out the flames. His wet T-shirt clung to his body, but burns on his shoulder still prickled.  
“ Fight me back,” Elissa ordered, “Use the spark I know you have inside you to repel the flames!”  
“I don’t know how!, “ Stiles bellowed.  
 _Ugh,I only have one year to make this pathetic piece of crap into something useful_ , Elissa thought.  
Stiles rubbed his burnt shoulder as he swayed from dizziness.  
“Fuck you, Elissa”, he snapped, “You burn me, yell at me. How am I supposed to know how to draw out this spark, forget about whether it even exists? I can’t fucking study or work on no food and no sleep, you bitch!”  
Elissa’s nose flared with anger, “How dare you speak to me in such a disrespectful tone. I am your Domina and you will respect me as such. Who else would teach your ungrateful ass? You’re not even trying, you idiot. Magic is what we live, dream, breathe, we are nothing without it, fool. But I can’t feel that you need the magic as much as a mage should. You just think we are playing, it’s all fun and games right?”  
Stiles set his mouth into a grim line, “Look, I can’t do magic like this. I want to go back to my room and get some sleep. I’ll come back in the morning” Stiles resolved.  
Elissa looked into Stiles’s eyes, “I will only warn you once Stiles. Don’t walk out today. If you do , you’ll regret it,”  
“Goodbye Elissa,” Stiles sighed.  
As the door slammed, Elissa shook her head.  
I warned him, she thought.

Getting back to his room proved to be difficult. The brown haired girl had made many twists and turns as she went to Elissa’s room and his tired, foggy brain couldn’t remember all of them. Dashing down another corridor, he ran into the man he thought of only as “the soldier”. The soldier who put him in the cell. The man’s features were blurred in Stile’s mind, but he could not forget those icy blue eyes, that cruel sneer that ever twisted the soldier’s features. Stiles swallowed and tried to pass the man. Hopefully the man wouldn’t recognize him.  
“Well, Well, “ the soldier grabbed Stiles’s wrist, “ What do we have here? Oh is it that Stiles boy who swore so bravely when I put him into that hole?”  
Stiles tried to be brave, but his words collapsed inside of him, “ I-I-“  
The man gripped Stile’s tightly, “And here I’ve got you alone and away from your protector. What a nice touch. This is going to be my lucky day,”  
Stiles heard footsteps behind the man. A dozen other men entered.  
“Please,” Stiles begged the other men, “Help me! Let me go!”  
The soldier chuckled, “We’re not here to help you”. Stiles began to struggle. The soldier gave Stiles a quick smack to the head and dragged his unconscious body away.

Stiles woke up in a way you never want to find yourself ever. He was naked as the day was born, lying on dirty cobblestones, in the dark of an unknown room. His hands and feet were bound together by rusty metal handcuffs and his left foot was chained to the wall. Stiles thrashed at his chains, trying to escape.  
“ No, No” he whispered to himself.  
The door opened and the soldier entered.  
The man took one finger and traced it along Stile’s spine. “Much thinner than I remember you being”, he commented as the boy trembled.  
“Still fun anyway”  
 _Stiles felt every moment slow down like molasses, an eternity of agony, the man’s fingers brushed over his body proprietarily, as if he owned Stile’s body. It made Stiles feel so dirty. Thumbs circled his nipples, examined his shoulder bruise, all the way down to the cleft oh his ass._  
 _“Not there.” Stiles screamed, “Not inside me. No”_  
 _The man snickered, “Do you think your wants even matter here. You’re nothing but a dirty human, without any special talents. No matter what that Elissa thinks. To me, you will always be that boy cowering in the darkness of the cell, in his own urine, begging to be free”. The man stuck his index finger into Stile’s hole and it hurt. His unused muscles convulsed against the foreign object. “Get it out” Stiles cried. And to his relief, the man moved his finger out of Stile’s ass. Stiles’s relief was short, when he heard the sound of a zip moving, the eerie rip echoed in the silence. Terror filled Stiles and he felt tears drip onto his chin_.  
 _“Open your mouth,” The man ordered. Stiles shook his head. The man pinched Stiles’s nose and Stiles held his breath for 30 seconds before he had to gasp and the man pushed his thick penis inside Stiles’s mouth. It smelled disgusting, unwashed and sour like rotten milk. He wanted to throw it out of his mouth. “ Bite,” the man warned, “ and not only will you lose your teeth, I’ll take you dry.” Stiles refused to be a willing instrument in this. He held his mouth open but did nothing. He did not want this. After a while, the man shrugged, “Ok, have it your way,”_  
 _And then he moved his penis out of Stiles’s mouth, and the pain that felt like nothing Stiles had every experienced came. So great and massive, he had no words to describe it, he felt his butt tearing around the man’s penis. He heard someone’s voice wailing, a high shriek that pierced his ears. The man drew out and slammed in again. The voice continued to scream._  
 _All moments blurred together after that. Stiles couldn’t tell you how long it had taken, minutes or days, months or years. He could only tell you that at one point, the blood made it easier for the penis to slide in and out of him, and the agony diminished to a burning, that the wailing stopped. At some point the man left something wet inside of him, pulled up his zipper and walked towards the door as if Stiles was nothing, as if he had not just tore a man open and left him there to die. Stiles felt slickness all over his legs on the floor._  
 _Something shattered inside of Stiles and kept shattering. “You”, Stiles snarled._

And it was as if something had exploded inside of him. He was a burning supernova, and blood turned to fire in his veins. In his minds eyes, a yellow snake uncurled from the depths of his cave. The soldier stopped in his tracks. White hot light filled the entire room as Stiles screamed at the power rushing through him. The light grew, hungry, and brilliant, as it touched the man, it absorbed his soul and his breath, leaving his body nothing but a shallow husk.  
Stiles felt satisfaction jolt through him. “I’m not weak anymore”  
But then he was racked with more pain, he couldn’t control it, the white flame grew inside him pitiless and merciless, pushing against the stone walls of the room, causing even the rocks to crack  
It won’t stop. I’ll kill everyone, he thought in terror.  
At that moment,the door opened and he saw Elissa’s thin form enter.  
She was encased in a bright purple force field that rippled around her lick a bubble. With a cutting motion, she said a few words Stiles could not decipher and his magic quieted down, but he still buzzed with it, it would answer whenever he needed it.  
She walked to Stiles’s prostrate form and broke all his chains and cuffs. Stiles struggled to stand and Elissa held him. He leaned against her body like a child seeking comfort from his mother; Elissa put her arms around Stiles.  
“He hurt me,” Stiles sobbed.  
Elissa’s lavender scent was cool and comforting. Her arms steadied Stiles as she brushed some tears from his cheek.  
“I know Stiles, _mi carissimi_ , I know”  
Stiles’s racking sobs echoed around the dark room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa, I almost triggered myself at the end of this.  
> I feel really bad for Stiles but this change is necessary, because without it, the story cannot proceed etc. etc. Stiles had to be pushed to the limits of his endurance. Also, the dark night of the soul is both a poem written by St. John the Divine and a term for a spiritual crisis. Check it up guys!  
> Hope you like this chapter! And as always, besitos ,xxxoooo


	6. And the answer is no

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: one violent scene

_Now_  
The lights faded. The chanting stopped. Silence hung in the air for a moment, loopy and confused. Stiles held his breath, his heart thudding in his chest, his magic buzzing in agitation.  
 _Please wake up. Please wake up. Please wake up._ Stiles thought.  
Deaton walked over to inspect John Stilinski’s supine body.  
“ His heart is beating, “ Deaton pronounced.  
A tiny wisp of a sigh curled out of Stiles as he breathed in relief.  
“When will he wake up?” Stiles demanded.  
Deaton hemmed and hawed, “Soon. Maybe tomorrow or the day after the next?”  
Stiles felt irritation move through him, “Wow, Deaton, “ Stiles remarked sarcastically, “ today or tomorrow or sometimes is so descriptive.”  
“Well,” noted Scott, “we’ll need a wheelchair to get him out of here. Mr. Stilinksi would probably prefer to wake up in his own bed”  
As Scott left the room to get a wheelchair. Stiles knelt beside his father. He brushed his father’s hair, felt his father’s heartbeat thump comfortably against his palm. He was happy that his father would live another day.  
The group in the room had dispersed, and only Derek was left behind.  
“Stiles,” Derek began, “I am so sorry about thi—“  
Stiles turned his head towards Derek, anger cocked inside him like a loaded gun. Adrenaline still buzzed, in his veins like a bad overdose of speed.  
“Shut up, Derek. I’m tired of hearing excuses for your fuckups. Hey, here’s a piece of advice, why don’t you stop fucking up all the fucking time?”  
Derek raised his voice, almost, but not quite pleading, “I tried to warn him off Stiles, I told him that the manticore was bad news. That he should back off and not get involved. He wouldn’t listen.”  
“ And you couldn’t call me , Derek, tell me what he were getting into?” Stiles challenged.  
“ You? Stiles? You? You ran so far away from Beacon Hills, from magic. You never wanted to be involved Stiles. You didn’t return my texts, my calls, and my letters. Even when I needed help the most, you abandoned me,” accused Derek.  
Stiles laughed. It was not a nice laugh, but a low laugh, filled with a twisted black rage, and a decade of resentment.  
“I abandoned you?” Stiles laughed again. “This is just too good. Do you know how long I rotted in that cell, in complete darkness, believing you would come for me? And all the wonderful things that happened to me during my “stay” with Kind Deucalion and his merry band of Alphas? Oh they were not nice hosts, I can assure you of that. And every single day I prayed, I hoped, I trusted and I believed that you would come for me, that my _mate_ would save me. But you--, you were busy mired in your despair, whining about your _difficult_ lot in life” Stiles snarled.  
“ _Poor Derek_ ,” Stiles continued, his voice rising, louder and louder, the words being ripped from some deep place inside him “ Poor Derek with the tragic family fire and the loss of his sister. Poor Derek, the victim of his evil, scheming Uncle. Poor Derek, his mate doesn’t love him. For Once, this is one story in which you don’t get to be the victim!” Stiles screamed.  
The room was charged with an unnatural silence.  
Then quietly, Derek whispered, “You never forgave me for not finding you. I am so sorry Stiles. I looked for you. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t ache for you”, Derek placed his hand over the faded binding mark Stiles knew still resided on his chest. It was a connection that Stiles had magically ripped apart years ago, leaving a warped scar that would never heal.  
The heartfelt gesture should have melted Stiles’s heart, but he only felt cold inside, an ice that pervaded his skin down to the marrow of his bones.  
“I don’t want to hear it, Derek, “Stiles said quietly.  
Stiles pressed his palm against his forehead, “Please just stay away from me and mine. Everything you touch goes down in flames.”  
At that moment, Scott entered with the wheelchair and the conversation was ended.  
An unholy silence lingered in the room long after Stiles had left, Derek felt as if his heart had been ripped apart again. The scar that had once been their binding pulsed underneath his fingers, like the last embers of a dying flame.

It took 3 days for John Stilinski to wake up. All that time, Stiles never left John’s side. He took more vacation days he had saved up at work. He wiped his father’s brow when the elder Stilinski convulsed in fever. He worried and paced, fluffing the pillows his father lay on, and turning him on his side so he didn’t get bedsores. Just when Stiles was beginning to despair of his father ever waking up, John Stilinski’s eyes opened.  
Stiles’s heart lept with joy.  
“ Dad,” he whispered, “ hugging his father.  
“Easy Son,” the older Stilinski grinned out, “I’m still fragile. Damn that manticore must have hit me pretty hard”, he chuckled.  
Stiles’s expression turned serious, “about that…….. Dad, I want you to retire.”  
“What?” Sheriff Stilinski blurted out.  
Stiles sighed, “We’ll talk more when you’re better.”  
Stiles stayed for a week; luckily he had saved a lot of vacation days. He completed the piece of important code for the prosthetic robot after somehow figuring out the very small bug in his code and sent it in. In between throwing out all the junk food in his father’s fridge. _“Hamburgers are not a food group, dad”_ , he called and texted Jessica. On the first day, she did not answer any of his calls or texts, but by the third day of nonstop texting and pleading, she finally answered. Stiles took the call in the privacy of his room.  
“I ‘ve been doing a lot of thinking” she responded on the first ring, “ And I still love you, I just worry that I need to know what’s going on with you. Whatever horrible thing happened, I’ll help you get through it, but you need to trust me enough to tell me what’s wrong.”  
Stiles explained, “What you saw was a panic attack. I used to have them all the time after my mom died of cancer. I should have told you about them, but they went away and I thought I’d never have to deal with them again. I’m sorry I was freaking out. This weekend, I nearly lost my father to a heart attack and I wasn’t thinking. My mother’s dead, Jessica, he’s the only one I have.”  
But Jessica of course followed up with the most logical question, “Why couldn’t I come with you then?”  
Stiles thought on his feet, “Well, I freaked out because I was so ashamed that you witnessed one of my panic attacks and I went crazy, I guess,”  
“I feel like I’m not getting the whole story, Przemyslaw” Jessica averred, “And in any case, when something happens, I need you to come to me not push me away”  
Stiles sighed, “I know. What can I do to make it up to you?”  
“Let me come down and help you. I would love to spend time with your dad anyway Stiles,”  
Stiles ran his fingers through his short hair, “Ok. Bye honey.”  
“Bye love,” Jessica replied warmly.  
After Stiles had finished his call, he walked down the stairs to the living room.  
His dad sat on a couch with a bowl of popcorn on his lap in front of the television.  
“Daaad”, Stiles complained testily, “No fast food. I didn’t save you from the manticore’s venom just so you could die by the slow-acting poison of hot dogs,”  
“Come on Stiles, I’m as healthy as a horse”, his dad complained.  
“And I want you to stay that way,” explained Stiles.  
Despite his scolding, Stiles sat on the couch and ate a bit of popcorn.  
“Oh , heads up Dad, Jessica’s coming. She’ll probably be here by 5 or 6 p.m.”  
“Oh, your fiancee?” answered the Sheriff.  
“Yep,” Stiles said, popping the p.  
“I’m really looking forward to her double chocolate chip cookies!” the Sheriff grinned.  
In a flat voice, Stiles continued, “I told her you had a heart attack.”  
“Oh,”  
The Sheriff began, “Stiles,”  
“Daaaaad,” Stiles whined.  
“Trust is essentially in all relationships. You can’t keep lying to her,” the Sheriff reminded.  
“I’m not lying, dad, I’m keeping her safe.” Stiles said defensively.  
“Ok,” the Sheriff responded, “ but sooner or later, you need to come clean. If you love her as much as you say you do.”  
“Can we just watch reruns of I love Lucy in peace. No lectures?” Stiles gestured at the TV.  
“I can’t even ask why you wouldn’t see Scott when he dropped by last night? He was your best friend.” The sheriff did not really know when to stop.  
Stiles abruptly stood up and walked to the kitchen.  


In the kitchen, Stiles felt his throat congest, _these walls. this house. Being back in Beacon Hills. He could see himself dragged out of the house by the two hulking wolves, one late September night. He had fought. Tried to stab one of them with a kitchen knife. Screamed. Scratched and bit. But he was only one boy against two werewolves. The odds were bad. The stupid thing was he had planned for this, his mind was like a rat,eternally running in a maze, and he had thought of every eventuality. But when it got to that moment. The moment two intruders had broken down his door and changed his life forever, all his plans lay in ruined tatters. No one is every prepared for one evil truly comes knocking at your door. Seconds seemed to fly by. And looking at the floor, Stiles could imagine the trail of blood he left behind as the wolves dragged him, like a stupid sack of meat out of his kitchen and down his steps. Then he had mercifully blacked out._  
Sometimes, at his worst, He wished he had never woken up.  
But, he thought as he steadied himself with the deep breathing exercises his old therapist had taught him, he was better. Life was better. He had left all of that behind. There was no blood on the floor. He was imagining it.  
Stiles looked at the clock and decided to throw himself into making a nice salad with cheese, chickpeas, carrots, and chicken slivers so that Jessica would have something to eat. He didn’t know if he could stand to eat anything though.

Three hours later, Jessica arrived. By then Stiles had obsessively thrown himself into making a giant pitcher of strawberry-peach smoothie to go along with the chicken salad and pasta salad he made. Cooking was good. Cooking was even a little like magic, you had to follow rules and an orderly structure. The work sated the thrumming magical power in his veins. The power which cried to be set free.  
Jessica was perfectly made up as usual. She had plaited her cornsilk hair into a fresh braid. And she was carrying a package of cookies.  
“Mr. Stilinski!” She exclaimed as she walked in. She gave Stiles’s father a warm hug.  
“I heard about everything. So I made you cookies to cheer you up. But I decided considering your recent heart attack, sugar might not be a good idea. So I made oatmeal cookies instead,”  
The Sheriff looked a touch saddened by this.  
“Aww, I’m sorry,” Jess apologized.  
“I’m really glad to see you’re ok,” She said with genuine kindness.  
At that moment, Stiles walked over from the kitchen.  
“Hey Jess,” he pecked her on the cheek. “I made dinner”  
“Thanks. You didn’t have to,” Jess demurred.  
“It was my pleasure,” insisted Stiles.  
“Do you mind if I talk with your father for a few moments, “Jessica asked.  
“Sure,” answered Stiles, “let me just finish up in the kitchen”  
Jessica and the Sheriff walked to the living room, Jessica supporting the Sheriff deftly with her left hand so he wouldn’t fall.  
In the kitchen Stiles paced back and forth.  
What were they talking about?  
Was it him?  
He paced until he could stand it no longer. Well, there was only one way to find out.

 

In the living room, Jessica was speaking to the Sheriff quietly, under the noise of the television set.  
“I’m worried about Stiles,” She announced, biting her lip.  
“ At home, he had a full panic attack and he kept screaming, don’t touch don’t touch me or something like that. And he won’t speak to me, he shut me out. Even now, he doesn’t look happy or relaxed. I know him. I know how he looks like when he’s anxious or nervous. And cooking? Stiles only cooks a ton when he’s really worried about something. Tell me what I can do to help”  
The Sheriff felt stuck in a difficult position. On one hand, he didn’t want to betray Stiles’s confidence; on the other hand, he didn’t want his son to lose Jessica, who was perhaps one of the best things that had ever happened to Stiles. She truly loved and cared for him.  
The Sheriff opened his mouth to reply, but before he could get a word out, Stiles’s voice boomed.  
“Hey everyone, Dinner’s done!”

They all sat down to a quiet dinner. Jessica tried to fill the silence with some idle chatter over things like guns and old mystery TV shows, which she and the Sheriff shared a mutual passion for. The Sheriff replied to her anecdotes absentmindedly. And Stiles sat in stony silence, pushing his food around his plate.  
Near the end of the meal, Stiles dropped a bombshell on his father.  
“I want you to come and live with me and Jess.”  
Even Jessica was shocked. Wisely, she said nothing.  
“What?” The Sheriff replied, stunned, “ No.”  
Stiles continued, “You’re getting old dad. You’re way past retirement age. And you’ve just had a heart attack. Face it; you’re way too old to be running around on the force anymore. You can come live with us. I’ll buy you any house you want. Just,” Stiles voice dropped into pleading, “ Please come home with me,”  
“I understand that you’re anxious because of what happ—“, The Sheriff caught himself, “ the heart attack. But I can’t stop doing what I love.”  
“Doing what you love is important,” Stiles argued, “ but you keep putting yourself in dangerous situations. And I worry that one day you could get into trouble which I might not be able to get you out of,”  
“I’ve got my Smith and Wesson and my rifle,” the Sheriff gestured to the rifle mounted on the wall that they both knew was filled with wolfsbane. “Your old man can take care of himself.”  
“There are other things out there that a gun can’t protect you from,” Stiles shot back.  
Jessica watched the argument, her brow wrinkling in confusion.  
“Then I’ll meet those monsters, with my gun in hand and teach them never to mess with a Stilinski. I’m not afraid of death at this old age, Stiles” The sheriff responded calmly.  
“But what about me? While you go off in your heroic quest, what about me, dad? I already lost," Stiles’s voice was choked with tears, “ mom. And I don’t want to lose you too. I want you to be the grandpa to my kids. To see me get married dad. Please reconsider.”  
“I’ll be there and do all those things, Stiles. I’ll be careful and safe,” the Sheriff comforted Stiles.  
“Like you were safe this weekend? No matter how careful you are. No matter how much you watch your back, if you live in Beacon Hills, you’ll never be safe. Something will get you. And what if I can’t get there in time?” Stiles begged.  
“And so your answer is to shut me up in your house, take me away from the job I love? We can’t all hide away in our houses and pretend the monsters don’t exist, Stiles. Some of us have to face the monsters and hold back the darkness. The answer is no Stiles” the Sheriff repeated.  
At that moment, the lights flickered; the plates on the table slid to the ground and broke in a resounding crash. Picture flames flew off the walls and the TV turned itself on and buzzed with white noise. The Sheriff and Jessica covered their ears.  
“I’m sorry,” Stiles whispered quietly.  
The TV turned back on and the lights stopped flickering.  
“You’re glowing, Stiles” Jessica whispered in awe.  
The glow dimmed and what followed was a hushed silence.  
Stiles stood up. “I’ll get a dust pan,”  
“What did I just see?” Jessica questioned, rooted to her seat.  
“Nothing,” The Sheriff responded, “just an electrical failure. The wiring in this house has always been dodgy.”  


Later that night, Stiles knocked on his father’s door.  
“I’m sorry for what happened at dinner. I was out of line,” Stiles apologized.  
His father sat on the bed, Stiles sat beside him.  
“Don’t worry about it son.”  
Then the Sheriff knew he had to ask, “How did you know I was about to tell Jessica what was going on?”  
Stiles grimaced, “I may have used a little bit of magic.”  
“I see.” the Sheriff remarked.  
“I hate to tell you this. But your magic is out of control. You’ve been buzzing with it all afternoon. And I’d hate to see what happened 7 years ago repeat itself. Are you still talking to that therapist?”  
“Look, “Stiles acknowledged, “I know I hurt a lot of people then, but that was then, this is now. I’m better. It’s just that being here”  
“I know," the Sheriff cut in, “This is where it all happened. This place must stir up some awful memories for you.”  
“You have no idea,” Stiles muttered.  
“Stiles,” John clapped a hand to his son’s shoulder, “ you know I’m always here. If you want to talk. If you need anything. You’re my son and I will always be there for you. And I love you,”  
Stiles gave his father a hug. An emotional expression of warmth that once had been rare between the father and son.  
Stiles broke the embrace first.  
“ I know, dad,” Stiles responded, rubbing his eyes with his knuckles, “ Just please think about what I said.”  
“ I will, “ the Sheriff vowed, feeling the tiniest bit sad.  
Stiles got up and turned the light off, “Jess and I leave in the morning, dad, sleep well.”  
“You too.”  
Stiles slowly shut the door. Sometimes when the Sheriff looked at his son, he could see echoes of the kind of person Stiles would have been if he had not been tortured. not been kidnapped. These visions of a future that never was were sometimes so clear to the Sheriff, it was like a mirror of Stiles future self standing right in front of him. In those moments, the Sheriff's chest ached, his throat burned, mouth filled with the sourness of shut doors, closed windows, broken promises and possibilities lost.

The next day, Stiles and Jessica got into the back of Jessica’s silver Honda Accord and drove off.  
Stiles would be back for his car later, he wanted to catch some sleep as Jessica drove.  
Jessica drove along the highway with worry in her heart; her fiancée was lying to her. and she knew it. But why was he lying? And what about that weird power shortage? Stiles hadn’t slept a wink the night before, tossing and turning muttering strange unintelligible words in his nightmares.  
She looked at her husband for a second; Stiles opened his eyes briefly, as if he was aware of her gaze.  
“Why do you think my dad won’t come with us?" Sties asked,"I have a stable job, I can take care of him. Hell, who wouldn’t love to retire?”  
“Sometimes, “Jessica said carefully, “you can’t tell a person what to do even if it helps them. Sometimes if you love a person, you have to set them free.”  
Stiles’s brow furrowed in confusion.  
“Whatever, I’m going back to sleep,“ Stiles replied, obliviously.  
Jessica sighed and straightened her hands on the steering wheel, her diamond engagement ring flashing brilliantly in the early morning California sun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes I feel like I write the story and sometimes the story writes me. It was one of those weird moments when the story wrote me this time. So one commenter asked for more background, I've added a little more background to the story and of course missing gaps will be filled as we go on and the story gets more twisty and turny!. Stiles is a bit of an asshole here, but remember, we don't know the entirety of what he's gone through.... and I'll leave it at that. Enjoy and as always, I love comments. and i seriosly need a beta. xoxoxo


	7. Teach me Everything you know

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, this chapter is a flashback one, it involves lots of worldbuilding/background info on the LexMagnini. and a little bit of aftermath of rape.

**10 years ago**  
Most people don’t believe in throwing a kid into the deep end of the pool and telling him to swim or drown.  
Those people hadn’t met Elissa.  
Or maybe Elissa hadn’t met them. 

Stiles was in absolute pain for a week. There were scars inside him that tore whenever he moved. He bled on and off throughout the first day. After the bleeding came a sticky discharge from his butt, His stomach ached and food smelled revolting.  
He never felt clean. Even after he showered five times. Even after he scrubbed his skin with the soap as hard as he could, he could still feel the semen inside of him and he hated himself.  
On the second day, as he lay, in absolute misery, Elissa entered his room.  
The tenderness she had showed him that night had disappeared from her face, replaced by cool resolve.  
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself precept,” She ordered.  
“ You don’t have a week to lie on your ass and cry about how life is so hard. Now that your magic has manifested, I need to teach you and shape you into a mage. Even if it is a piss-poor one. Here’s a book about the elemental casting. You can practice the hand movements on your bed. You have a week to memorize the book. See you next Monday” with this, Elissa took her leave.  
Her actions may have seemed pitilessly cruel, but in retrospect, this was the best thing Elissa could have done for Stiles. The work took his mind off the horror and agony he had suffered and allowed to him gain some control over his life.  
 _I will never be weak again._ Stiles swore to himself.  
All week he practiced the hand casts. One characteristic of some types of adhd can be obsession. Stiles could generally never concentrate on anything, but if there was one topic he was interested in, he obsessed over it to a painstaking degree. His unerring attention to detail would touch every aspect of that subject with the sharpness of the business end of a knife.  
Magic was Stiles’s new obsession.  
Elemental hand casts were interesting. There were four distinct poses, a curved hand for earth hand casts, a subtle rotating of the palm for water hand casts, a grasping and opening motion for fire hand casts and a rippling of the fingers for air hand casts. Then distinct variations in each pose could be the difference between a water droplet and summoning a full rainstorm.  
By Wednesday, Stiles had read the book all night long and finished it. On Wednesday, he read the book again and memorized it.  
Every day, the brown haired girl who had healed him came to check on him, bring him food and tend to his injuries. He learned that her name was Anna. She had quick, laughing brown eyes, a sweet dimple on her left cheek and she chuckled at all his jokes. S.tiles felt very fond of her.  
After one week, Stiles woke up when dawn had just broken through the sky. He re-traced his steps to Elissa’s room and knocked on her door.  
She opened the door, dressed in soft cotton sleeping pants, with her blond hair loose around her.  
“I want to learn everything you know, Domina” Stiles insisted.  
Elissa smiled.

The first week Stiles was not allowed to do any magic, which angered him.  
“Why won’t you let me do anything Domina? Why?” Stiles raged after being forced to meditate for the third time that week.  
Elissa’s rough voice startled him out of his tantrum.  
“Because magic isn’t about anger and emotion. It’s about waiting for the fruit to fall into your hand,” Elissa explained. _What does that mean,_ Stiles wondered.  
After the first session, Stiles prepared to walk out of the room when he felt his knees buckle.  
“What is it?” Elissa questioned.  
“I- I’m scared,” Stiles whispered, “scared to go back.”  
Elissa drew a rune on the inside of Stile’s wrist.  
“As your Domina, I always know where you are. Tap that rune if you’re ever in danger and I will come,” Elissa offered.  
Stiles was overwhelmed with gratitude, his eyes grew misty, “Thank you, Domina,”  
No one ever bothered him as he walked through the halls, as all the soldier had heard of his power, but that rune, buzzing comfortably on his skin, made him feel safe, protected.  
 _My Domina will let no harm come to me_.  
For the first time, Stiles felt safe.

 

After the first week, Stiles was able to slip into a meditative trance.  
“Feel deep inside you for that spark, Stiles,” his Domina counseled.  
Stiles could feel himself falling deeper into the darkness. At some point, he stopped falling. The darkness began to grow lighter, something started calling him.  
“ Do you feel that light inside you? Follow it.”  
Stiles walked towards the light. It felt cold, pitiless and inhuman as the deep dark ocean that ate sailors and pirates alike. In the deepest part of the pit,a golden snake reared it’s head and fixed him with a ruby gaze.  
“ I don’t like it,” Stiles whispered in a tiny voice.  
“What do you see?” The Domina asked  
“ It’s a snake. a golden snake with red eyes,” Stiles whispered in terror.  
“ Go up to it,” The Domina directed, “ Touch it, claim it for your own.”  
Stiles walked up to the snake. Close up he could see how large it was, larger than the anacondas of South America, which he once read could grow up to 28 feet long and ate small pigs. Snake was not an appropriate word for it. It was a dragon. Fear numbed him as the dragon, which seemed to stretch 3 or four miles, or as far as he could see, reared up. Stiles backed away and found himself hitting a solid wall.  
A wall?  
How could there be a wall here?  
“Please don’t eat me,“ Stiles begged the dragon.  
“I don’t want to eat you, “the dragon said.  
Stiles stared in amazement.  
“You speak?” he blurted out.  
“Of course I do, you dull human. Thanks for waking me up. I’ve been asleep for so long.”  
“How did you get inside of me?” Stiles questioned.  
“I was always part of you,” remarked the wyvern. To his amazement, the large dragon nuzzled at his head with it’s snout, ruffling Stles’s hair in an affectionate gesture, not unlike a large dog.  
As the dragon nuzzled him, Stiles suddenly felt warm inside, he could feel tenderness from the dragon suffusing his mind.  
“You should claim me” The dragon suggested.  
“ How do I do that?”  
The dragon lowered its nose down, until it was lying at Stiles’s feet. “Press your palm against my snout”  
Stiles did so. and he felt a spark jump into his palm and words flitted into his mind, words he had never used, had never known. He found himself speaking in an unintelligible language, which vacillated between tones. After an interminable amount of time, he felt something click inside of him.  
“ I am yours, my wizard,” the dragon bowed, “But then I was always within you.”  
Stiles opened his eyes, and founded himself looking into the bright blues of the his Domina.  
“Now, the real work begins,” She rubbed her hands.

 

In TV shows and books, magic is easy.  
The hero grabs the right sword or eats the proper apple and bam! He’s a wizard.  
Even Harry Potter didn’t spend nearly enough time studying, preferring to run around on hare-brained quests and fight in suicidal battles.  
Fuck that shit man, Stiles knows, magic is fucking hard.  
His day starts at 8 every morning and ends at 2 am the next morning. Weekends he gets at least two 300 page books to read and tons of homework to do. He is cramming years of study into one year. His life is magic. He eats, breathes and dreams about magic. He seriously dreams about magic, spells come to his lips at weird moments as he drifts between waking and sleeping.  
That’s when he get the chance to sleep.  
Most of the time, Stiles powers through with the coffee Anna brings him and keeps going.  
Not that he minds, magic is hard work, but it’s fun work.  
Nothing can compare to the joy of seeing a spell come to fruition, every single hand movement executed perfectly as the jolts of pure white light arc out of his fingers. It fills him with an zing! It’s the zing of knowing he is where he belongs, doing something he was born to be doing. It’s the zing of being exactly right. In the right place at the right time, the truth of who he is burning in his veins. It’s the feeling when he finishes another obscure tome. feeling stronger and more powerful; he’s at his peak, his zenith.  
He loves it.  
It’s an addiction, this fiery rush in his veins, it’s poetry in motion, the most beautiful and resounding orgasm he has ever felt, like an orgasm that leaves him on a loopy brilliant high so intense, the world feels like an unreal mirage of smoke.  
He was born to be a mage.

 

Back at work with Elissa, things are moving fast.  
He masters meditation, and that seems to calm his adhd for a while. Elissa gives him a focusing spell to help him get through the long readings she assigns.  
He flies through elemental casting. Then Spirit casting.  
Rune carving and making sigils of protection is a bit harder. He has to memorize the entire Norse alphabet, the symbols for fehu (wealth), sowilo (sun) and halgaz ( disaster). The perthro, cup of mysteries beckons to his imagination, creating the image of an unchained world, subject to the whirling twists of fortune. He learns which runes are major runes and minor runes. Which runes can be inverted and which runes cannot. He teaches himself to imagine the right things, whether it’s wheat or famine or the mystery of the universe to give the rune power and force and life.

“Exusia, also known as magic, is the primordial force of all things,” Elissa intones.  
“Everything you see, trees, sunlight, animals, people, even inanimate objects such as books are filled with exusia. It’s what keeps the universe going,”

“So why can’t most people feel exusia?” Stiles questions.

“In order to feel exusia, one must be perceptive. Most people do not have the perceptiveness one needs to feel the threads of exusia in their lives. With enough careful meditation, even the most careless mind can be taught to feel the living magic in objects,” Elissa explains.  
She continues, “However, to be a mage one cannot simply meditate, as I have taught you to. You have to also inherit a spark, an inner flame of power inside of you. Now each spark is unique and different. Sparks manifest themselves as a living animal or spirit inside of you,”

Comprehension seems to light Stiles’s face, “So the dragon I saw was the living manifestation of my spark.”

“Exactly,” confirmed Elissa. “A true mage is both receptive and sufficient. Receptive to magic and sufficient in having the elementary spark needed to work exusia. When a mage calls upon exusia, their spark resonates with the primordial spark of all magic and creation. That inner spark acts as a conductor for exusia’s power and transmits that power into real actions in the physical word.

Now, the only way to call directly to the heart of magic is to use the LexMagini. Most spells and enchantments necessitate calling upon the LexMagini”….

The LexMagini, or mages’ tongue is one of the hardest languages he’s ever learned. But then again, the only language he has learned is English, and he grew up speaking that. The LexMagini is an invented language, made of lone words from greek, latin, Spanish,french English and Old Norse. Basically almost every language known to man. The LexMagini has five tones. Each tone represents a specific mode or mindset. Elissa teaches him the tones as do, re mi, fa, and so, because solfege helps a student understand the tones better.

Do is the lowest tone, representing things solid and concrete. It is a descriptive mode. So if a mage use the do tone, every third word was accented down and he had to signify the mode he was using by adding “-olo” to the end of every verb. Any information relayed in the do tone must have an evidential. An evidential tells the listener how the speaker came about the information.  
For Example, Elissa explained,  
 _I know Stiles is alive because I have seen him_  
or Stiles countered, _My Domina said she pushes me too hard, because I have heard it_  
In the do tone a mage could not lie and any spell worked using the do mode could not change quality or character, only enhance the characteristics already there.  
So, a mage could not make a pretty man ugly or turn a frog into a spider in the do tone. He could only make a pretty man prettier or a frog more froglike, whatever that meant.

“Re is often called the female tone,” Elissa explained to Stiles  
“When I work in the Re tone, I can make things more comforting, softer, kinder, warmer or pleasing to the eye. Re creates a mirage, makes things appear better than they are. Re in essential in the creation of glamours, in contrast to the do tone, it is used to lie and deceive. But it does not change the true nature of anything.  
The mi tone, is self-interested. Mi is a very common expression of possession in many languages. In the mi tone, I can change aspects of my own nature. I can make myself fly. Allow myself to see and hear farther than is normal, give myself more clothing or more beautiful features. The changes I work are temporary and will disappear after a while”

“So these tones function in pairs? Like polar opposites?’ Stiles queried.

“In a sense, yes, they do,” Elissa answered.

“ Fa deals with others. With this tone, you can work changes in other people, give them attributes they would otherwise not have. Fa is not a selfish tone, one cannot work for yourself with the fa tone, what one does must be purely altruistic in nature. When Cinderella’s fairy godmother turned a pumpkin into her god-daughter’s carriage and transfigured Cinderella’s dress, that is an example of the fa tone used properly And the So tone,” here Elissa paused for a sip of water.

“The So tone is the most powerful of all. It is the only tone that allows you to create, ex nihlo something out of nothing. A mage with the proper mastery of the so tone can change reality to suit his whims. I will be helping you master all the tones. How to speak them and how to write with them”

Stiles would admit, looking back, that learning how to use each tone correctly was one of the most frustrating experiences of his magedom. The do, re and mi tones were not too hard. The do tone was a low hum, the re a light whisper, the mi a steady rumble. But fa required one to raise their voice to the highest pitch they could and the so tone, well, the so tone was hard, half song, half hum, it required strong vocal control and strange mouth movements.  
In between this, Stiles still had to read about how to draw various healing circles and memorize lists of mage words every day.  
Sometimes Anna would give him help, but mostly she just told him  
“I’m sorry Stiles, you have to figure it out yourself” and Stiles would struggle and struggle until inspiration would strike and he would realize how to do what he wished.

“The really powerful mages,” Elissa told him, “Don’t need words. They can shape the world with their thoughts, and their beliefs”  
“Domina,” Stiles complained, “I just spent nearly 3 months learning the Lexmagnini,”  
“Because only a few mages can get to that level of understanding. Being able to wordlessly cast requires your soul to have a resonance with exusia, the primordial soul of all magic” Elissa explained.  
“All of us mages resonate with exusia somehow, in fact. All beings are somehow called by exusia’s power. Humans call it God or Allah or whatever. But we mages know what it is,” She clarified, “Only a chosen few mages can resonate so well with exusia that it obeys their wishes with just a thought. Now turn to page 54, on blood magic,”  
Stiles listened to her teachings with only half a mind. He wanted to cast wordlessly; it would shortcut all his work on the LexMagini. Later that night, in the silence of his room, he practiced one of his elemental casts  
 _Aquereo!_ , he thought and threw up his hand in a water cast.  
No such luck.  
Eventually after an hour of frustration, he went to sleep.

They had moved into defensive magic now.  
Stiles learned the four stock defensive poses. He learned how to choke an opponent to death with just a sign. How to decapitate an attacker with only a cutting motion and the right word and send a soldier flying off his feat. How to kill with a kiss. She taught him how to use nature too, how to attack with wind or fire in the do tone if he felt a strong gust of a northeast wind. How to confuse an enemy by wrapping darkness around him like a cloak using the re tone. How to defend himself and others by weaving nets and wards and complicated shields filled with magic.  
Stiles practiced in his room, setting wards on his door that would call out to him if anyone entered. The first time he wove such a ward, Anna managed to bypass his magic and he found her in his room with his morning coffee.  
“I bypassed your wards,” she said by way of explanation.  
This was the first time Stiles realized how clever Anna was and how much she could teach him.  
“How?” Stiles asked.  
She took him to the door and showed him the gaps in his magic, the holes in his wards and places he had weaved his power too tightly.  
The next morning Stiles had created a new ward.  
She broke it again.  
Every time Stiles created a ward, Anna would destroy the ward and then Stiles would fix his original creation, using all of her critiques.  
Finally one day Stiles created a ward even Anna could not break. He felt so pleased that day as he sauntered into his Domina’s room.

 

Over time, Stiles’s relationship with his Domina had evolved from wary distrust to loyalty and affection. He treasured the knowledge she gave him and her punishing exactness which pushed him to excel. He knew she was truly a great teacher and in some moments he felt awed to be in her presence, to be under her protection, to be taught by a woman, who was one of the greatest mages alive.

 

One day, when Stiles met his Domina for his lesson, she was standing by her door.  
“Stiles,” she said, “follow me,”  
Stiles followed her through a few halls, down a long flight of stairs and stood before a door.With a shaking hand, he opened the door to the outside.  
Outside, the sunlight poured over the tops of the trees, it was late fall. Trees were alight with colors, deep indigo, ochre, vermillion red, burnished yellow and here and there the brilliance of green. Stiles stood in the middle of the forest and took a breath of fresh air.

and realized that he had not seen or felt the sun on his face in months.

 

Stiles had pushed his imprisonment to the back of his mind in a box marked, **Things Stiles Can Never Ever Think About**.

These are the things Stiles did not think about during his yearlong apprentice ship, his family, his father, Derek, his best friend, home, or getting free. Stiles had been so wrapped up in learning magic he had tried to shove all his emotions to the side. But now, with the waft of fresh air in his nostrils, with freedom so close, Stiles realized he wanted to run away.  
“Don’t”, Elissa stopped him before the thought had even formed concretely in his mind.  
“At the edge of the forest Deucalion has an army of wolf soldiers with orders to kill everyone who tries to cross the boundary of his property. They are armed with knives, teeth, claws, and guns. There are thirty to forty of them. Even with all the magic I have taught you, you would not survive,”  
Stiles swallowed.  
“Well, I just wanted to see what the outcome of that little experiment would be,” Elissa informed Stiles.  
“Back to work. Today we are going to practice calling animals to us. Each animal has a distinctive true name in the so tone. We must use the so tone because it is not natural for animals to respond to humans, we are forcefully taming an animal and……”  
As Elissa droned on, Stiles felt that his mind was elsewhere.  
His father. His mate. He had to get back. Had to find a way to let them know he was ok.  
A couples of weeks ago, Elissa had mentioned lucid dreaming and he had been intrigued enough to borrow a book on the subject. That night, he picked up one of his dream casting books and conjured a spell to let him walk into dreams.

Stiles fell into a deep sleep that night. As soon as he realized he was in a dream, he felt himself teleport from his room, out of the prison he lived in, past the boundary of soldiers who guarded the property and into his father’s room. Home.  
His father sat, with his head in his hands in Stiles’s old room Stiles’s bed was exactly as he had left it, the messy room was still strewn with comic books on the floor and empty packages of doritos. Three months worth of beard grew from John Stilinski’s chin.  
Stiles’s father looked up and Stiles gasped at seeing his face. His father looked like a haunted man, his face was pinched and pale, deep dark shadows carved under his eyes, lips trembling. An empty bottle of bourbon rolled across Stiles’s floor, and the Sheriff clutched a whisky bottle in his hand. The whole room stank of alcohol.  
Stiles’s father began to cry in large racking sobs and tears rolled down John Stiinski’s cheeks.  
Stiles had never seen his father cry. His heart ached.  
“Dad,” he yelled, sitting next to his father on the bed, “It’s me.”  
His father, by all rights, one of the noxum, or non-magic users, should not have been able to hear Stiles’s frantic screaming. But a parent’s love is a strange and supple thing, as mundane as a leaf of grass but stronger and deeper than the ocean.  
“ Stiles?” John questioned.  
Stiles felt joy flow through him  
“It’s me! Dad!” Stiles tried to hug his father but his incorporeal arms simply passed through. Stiles settled for saying “I missed you so much.”  
“ I must be hearing things,” John Stilinski murmured. Stiles could feel himself fading  
“ No! Ask me a question only Stiles would know,” Stiles pleaded in desperation.  
“What was the name of my wife?”  
“Claudia”  
“How did she die?”  
“Cancer”  
“ Who is Stiles’s best friend”  
“Scott”  
“What is Stiles’s favorite food group?”  
“Pizza” Stiles chuckled.  
“What does Stiles fear the most?”  
“Losing my dad,” Stiles answered.  
“Look dad, no matter what you heard, I’m not dead. I swear it.’  
“Tell me where you are and what son of a bitch kidnapped you so I can bring you back.”  
“ I don’t know exactly,” Stiles explained, “ I know I’m in a stone fortress on a large acre? acres of unoccupied land. But they’re not hurting me, anymore, that is? Dad, just hold on, I promise you I’ll find a way home to you, Dad. Like that boy in the Hook, I will come home.”  
The stress of holding the spell was starting to wear on Stiles.  
His eyes filled with tears, “I love you dad. so much. Don’t give up on me.”  
and with that Stiles dropped the spell and fell asleep.  
John Stilinski put down the whiskey bottle, wiped his tears and for the first time in a long dark twisted year, he felt something resembling hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know when I'll post chapter 8. I have an outline of how this story is meant to go but sometimes it changes before my eyes. In a few chapters, I am going to have to make a very difficult decision. As always, please comment, comments are perhaps one of the few highlights of my day.  
> As always, enjoy.


	8. Kisses Like the Sun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> and Stiles says, "I want you to know what it’s like to be worshipped,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. this is not for kids. there is now a little more explicitness added, written by my dubious talents. read at your own peril.

**Now**  
Derek was sleeping. In the blue room, afternoon sunlight alights on his naked form, outlining each muscle like a Grecian nude statue. His dark shaggy hair lies softly on the covers. He breathes shallowly. Deep in his mind a memory is unfolding.........

Stiles is 17. He is like a sweet yellow daffodil blossom, slowly unfolding in his youth. Everything about him is warmth, warm edges, soft fingers, sweet honey-brown eyes that glow under the sun. He has never felt the pain of lashes on his back, the screaming echo of madness in solitary confinement, the horror of a penis breaking into his body and making him feel like he can never be truly clean again.  
And this Stiles loves. He loves with a passion that is profound, an untrusting innocent love, of someone who has never felt his heart broken or the pain of loss. When he kisses Derek it is as if he wants to swallow him, tongues, teeth, mouth everywhere. When he says Derek’s name, it is as if he’s whispering a prayer.

One night after a pack meeting in November, Stiles lingers long after Scott and Alison and Lydia have left. He and Derek have been dating for a good year now and their smells linger on each other’s clothes and sweatshirts. The other wolves’s sharp noses have ferreted out their secret affection. And the bond they have made is strong, and so beautiful. When Derek closes his eyes and feels for it, it gives him strength even in the midst of his nightmares because the connection feels like the taste of a summer morning when his family was still whole, the sweetness of his mother’s blueberry pancakes drizzled with golden maple syrups on a Saturday morning, the scent of his sister’s perfume as she held him when he was little and sang away nightmares. Stiles is all those things to him, and more, home..  
On this night, Stiles waits for Scott to leave and then he pounces on Derek and presses his lips on Derek’s mouth. Stiles is eager, his tongue begs Derek for entry and Derek obliges, opening his mouth, letting Stiles taste all of him, lap at the back of his tongue. They fall together with hungry teeth, mouths and tongues, biting at each other.  
“Clothes off,” Stiles orders.  
Derek slides his shirt off slowly, almost teasingly revealing his perfect abs and chest. Stiles hums with pleasure.  
After a minute, Stiles is tired of waiting for Derek to finish undressing. His adhd is like that, he’s impatient for the next step. So Stiles takes matters into his own hands. He unbuttons Derek’s trousers, pulls down his zipper and cups his cock, kissing the penis at the tip in affection. Then Stiles discards his own clothes in a whirlwind, eager to get to the action. Derek chuckles, and teases fondly,” Come on Stiles, my cock will still be waiting for you in ten minutes. I’m not going anywhere.”  
Stiles grouses, “Hey man, you can’t just sit there like some sexy God and ask me not to be excited. Have some pity for us not-perfect humans, ok?”  
Once Stiles is naked, he stalks over to Derek lays him horizontal out on the couch. Derek tries to get up but Stiles stops him, “lay down big boy, tonight, I want to explore.”  
Stiles kisses Derek like a drowning man, barely coming up for air. He presses tiny kisses over Derek’s chest and cheek, licking at Derek’s elbows and littering his abs with sloppy smooches. He bites at Derek’s neck, roughly staking his claim. Derek can barely breathe; the love he feels from the bond is overwhelming, crashing over him in waves, he can’t feel where he and Stiles begin and end, like an infinity loop, they are bound together. Ouroboros. a circle than can never end.  
“I love you,” Stiles murmurs softly.  
And then Stiles kneels next to the couch, pulling down Derek’s white briefs,  
“During the meeting today all I could think about was how bad I wanted you like this, in my arms, your sweet cock in my lips. I want to please you, to make everyone know you are mine. I want to erase every painful frown from your mouth so you never feel sad again. I want you to know what it’s like to be worshipped,”  
Stiles kisses Derek’s cock like you would kiss a shy animal. coaxing it with his hands, until it grows in his fingers. Then as Derek’s penis fills with blood, Stiles spreads kisses alongside it.  
“I c-c-can’t, Stiles” Derek breathes out.  
“Hold it,” Stiles whispers in his ear, “I spent all week learning how to do this for you,”  
And Stiles engulfs the cock in his mouth, sucking like it’s his favorite treat in the world. Slowly, Stiles takes the cock further down his throat, until his nose is buried in Derek’s pubic hair.  
Derek is so hard from the wetness, the tightness, the heat. Stiles’s young lips around his penis, cheeks hollowed and eyes closed in bliss. After a minute, Stile’s eyes widen in shock as his penis pulses and he comes all over himself. Stiles’s orgasm makes his throat contract even more.  
“I’m coming, Stiles!” Derek yells, unable to resist that hot, tight, suction  
Stiles gives an impish smile, as best as he can around Derek’s cock and lets Derek come down his throat, salty yet sweet, Stiles swallows all of Derek’s come.  
Derek’s voice is ragged from the force of his orgasm, “You are such a slut, Stiles, coming just from sucking on my cock. Do you like cock so much? Would you like me to make you a model of my cock so you can suck it when you go to bed at night?”  
Stiles chuckles, mouth still wet from cum and leans over to kiss Derek on the mouth again, sharing some of the cum in his mouth with Derek.  
Then Stiles stands up and walks to the fridge in the kitchen. Derek follows curiously behind. In the fridge is a chocolate cake.  
“I made it for you. with my own hands and everything man,” Stiles explains, “ It’s November 7th, happy birthday”  
Derek is a little misty. He feels almost like doesn’t deserve this, no one has ever gone through the trouble to care about his birthday before. Even Laura forgot sometimes. And after she died, well, people had other things to worry about, right? Birthdays aren’t really important.  
Derek prides himself on being an unemotional man, on not letting petty feelings and emotions get in the way of logic and what has to be done. But these little things, little ways Stiles shows he cares, like resting his comforting hand on Derek’s shoulder whenever Derek has to make a difficult announcement to the pack. Or driving Derek home after he’s tired from a long battle with another supernatural creature. Just small things make Derek feel so loved in a way he’s never felt before.So he tries to pretend he is not crying a little when he sees that cake with his name on it.  
 _Someone cared about him enough to reminder his birthday. His heart fills with warmth_  
“Y-you didn’t have to,” Derek tells him, his voice shaky.  
“Don’t be silly, Derek,” Stiles laughs. And it is a laugh like apple cider in the fall. the bond between them burns like a roaring fire on a winter’s night.  
Stiles continues, “I have to celebrate your birthday because I want to thank the universe that you were born. You mean everything to me,” Stiles’s voice catches in his throat, “Every day I wake up is better because you were here. And when I turn 18, I’m going to marry the shit out of you.”  
Derek will always regret that he let that moment go.

What Derek wanted to say was this:

_Stiles, you are every morning every sunrise and sunset. You are every silent contemplative afternoon. Every sweet cup of coffee I have ever drunk. Every clear glass river I have ever admired. You are the clouds sliding by on a cool summer’s day. Every brilliant hue of fall. You are the sun which brings light to all things. I love you and I would be lost without you_

But He’s too afraid. Saying I love you is like jumping over a chasm, it’s a leap of faith, believing that someone will catch you when you fall. If you admit you love someone, it’s like admitting that that person owns you in every deep intrinsic sense of the word.  
So Derek says nothing.

The dream continues. Poets say that memory is sweet, but this memory is sweet like April digging life out of a wasteland. As sweet as ripping apart old scars just to see whether they will bleed thin creeks of red blood over your skin, and shoulders and stomach. Even in the dream, Derek knows how this story goes.  
This Stiles doesn’t know that 4 months before his 18th birthday he’ll be kidnapped by an angry pack of wolves and beaten and tortured until he doesn’t know his name. This Stiles isn’t bitter and vindictive, shaking with flashbacks or writing runes in his own blood on every wall in his house, in a desperate attempt at revenge.  
No.  
This Stiles leans in to Derek’s perfect cheek and gives him a thousand kisses like the sun. Then Stiles looks up into Derek’s eyes with a burning sincerity and vows  
“I will always love you,”

Derek wakes up to an empty bed. Heart aching like a hollow drum.  
He looks outside at the setting sun and wonders why everyone he loves always dies,  
in one way or another.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided I wanted to give all my readers a flashback of how the relationship between Derek and Stiles was long time ago. Writing this story is tough because unlike most stories, no one has any idea what's going on in the exposition, The story is like the layers of an onion, each peeling reveals another level of intensity.
> 
> Anyway, please comment man. Every single comment makes me feel like I have a little piece of the sun. Like I seriously refresh and refresh to see if I've got comments.  
> Also: Next two chapters are going to really hurt. I'm sorry in advance. So sorry,


	9. And the plot thickens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> um, yeah, no real warnings here.

**10 years ago**

“ I want to go home, Domina”  
Stiles’s eyes were bright and determined. A resolve in his pose that Elissa had not seen in weeks.

“ So, what brought this on, Stiles?” Elissa questioned.

Stiles did not answer. He didn’t want to tell Elissa about his nightly dreamwalks to see his father, how he felt his father’s sadness of missing him. How sometimes he couldn’t talk to his dad and he would watch how, at night, his father would toss and turn. He didn’t want to talk about how his heart felt sheared in two when he saw his father wake up in the middle if the night to his son’s room and lie on his son’s bed so that he could get sleep at night. Even though his father was looking better, Stiles knew he had to and wanted to get back home. Homesickness had come back with a force, like a tidal wave. At some moments he would close his eyes and see, as if it was right in front of him, the comfy brown leather recliner in his living room, the beaten green sofa that had seen better days and the blue rug his mother had loved. He would smell the scent of his father’s cologne; see his dad passed out on the recliner after a long shift at work. Hell, he missed Beacon Hills. He missed his father so much.  
And when he let himself think of it, he missed Derek. 

Finally after a long moment, Stiles simply explained,” I’m homesick”

Elissa replied, “Well, too bad. Deucalion will never let you go, now that you’ve gained some knowledge of magic. He wants his own personal sorcerer, to enhance his power. If he sees you trying to run away, he’ll kill you.”

“There has to be some spell, Domina, an invisibility spell or a teleportation rune that I can use to escape. Or just see my family, just for one day,” Stiles pleaded.

“What did I tell you about teleportation spells, Stiles?” Elissa asked in a pedantic manner.

Stiles replied begrudgingly, “That a teleportation spell needs such a huge sheer will of creation because the mage must take every single molecule of his being and will it to be transferred to another place and time. That magic cannot subvert the natural law of things and that a teleporting spell would take so much energy the mage would likely die before the spell would be completed.”

“At least you have learned something, child,” Elissa noted dismissively.

Stiles would not give up.  
“What do I have to do to escape this place Domina? As my Domina, you are sacredly bound to help and protect me. I can’t live my life this?” Stiles implored.

“There is only one answer to your dilemma Stiles.”

“What is it?” Stiles exclaimed.

“You have to kill King Deucalion.”

 

******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

All night, Stiles tossed and turned. Yes, in Beacon Hill, he had destroyed many monsters, but only to save his own skin. Pre-mediated, coldly planned killing…. what he would have to do to kill Deucalion would be unquestionably murder. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror and couldn’t imagine doing such a thing to another person. He was not a killer. not a killer. not.  
But every time he made the decision to just wait and hope that his friends or his father would come for him; his father’s face flashed before his eyes again. Even Derek’s face would appear and the long dormant bond would twinge with pain. And Elissa’s words would run through his mind, _“ He wants a mage, bound to him….”_ What did that even mean? What awful things would he have to do as Deucalion’s tool? Sure, learning from Elissa was awesome, but he certainly did not want to become Deucalion’s head mage. For three days, Stiles tossed and turned. Each time he slept, he saw blood on his hands. In the middle of the night, Stiles would sleepwalk to the bathroom and try to wash his hands clean of the blood he saw. and then he would blink, shake his head, realize where he was and see only his clean hands before him.  
On the third day, sleep-deprived and depressed, Stiles dropped in to ask his father’s advice.

Sheriff Stilinski was examining a map of the United States when Stiles dropped in. The sky outside showed a perfect inky night scattered only with the most subtle of stars. Winter had come and the smells of the house’s cranky heater rumbling reminded Stiles comfortingly of home.

“Dad?” Stiles whispered.

Their dream talk was still a hit or miss thing. Sometimes the Sheriff could feel Stiles hovering next to him, but couldn’t see or hear him. Other times, when the Sheriff was in a more susceptible state of mind, he could both see and hear Stiles.

Stiles dropped in to check on his father every three days. Stiles noticed as his visits became more regular that the Sheriff was able to guess or even predict when Stiles was coming more often. Even more, John Stilinski had started to believe that Stiles was not a figment of his imagination but his son trying to communicate with him.  
So when Stiles dropped into to ask his father’s advice, his father heard Stiles’s whispered “ Dad” and smiled.

“Hey Stiles, sit down,” his father offered.

Stiles took his seat upon a chair in the dining room that was not covered in pens and notes.

He looked at his father. As his visits had become more and more frequent, his father began to look better. The Sheriff had stopped drinking and his face had started to set into that stubborn Stilinski furrow of resolve. Stiles knew his father was looking for a way to free him, had not given up on him, and that thought made a candle of joy dance in his soul. No matter what, Stiles was sure, his father would go to the ends of the earth for him. His father loved him.

“ I need you to answer a question for me, son,” the Sheriff asked, “ what time is it where you are?”  
Stiles frowned. He remembered the red numbers of the digital clock above his bedspread… “ I think about 12:28” he replied.

The Sheriff muttered to himself, “ Ok, so it takes the average person 30 minutes to fall asleep, and you are talking to me now at 1pm. This means wherever you are, you’re still in the Pacific Time zone.”  
The Sheriff drew an X through the entire map but a few states, “Washington, Oregon, Nevada and California”

“Have you been outside, Stiles?” the Sheriff queried.

“Only once, Stiles answered honestly, “and it was green. Fall. There were lots of pretty leaves changing color”

“That narrows it down to Washington, Oregon and California. Nevada is mostly desert.”

“How cold is it where you are?”

“It’s pretty cold. Like I have to wear a sweater.”

The Sheriff deduced, “ The best guess I’d give of where they’re holding you is somewhere in Washington State. Somewhere where there’s a lot of open land and a tree cover to hide their tracks…..”

“Dad, “ Stiles pressed, “ I need your opinion on something.”

“Sure, what is it Stiles?” The Sheriff responded absently.

“ My teacher. You know the one who I said has magical powers? She told me that the only way I can escape this prison is if I murder the leader. I think, but I’m not sure, that she’d be willing to help me… but I don’t want to kill anyone, “Stiles ended, speaking in a very low voice.  
The Sheriff stopped circling towns on his map of Washington and turned to Stiles.  
He would have given anything to be able to hug his son right now, just put his arms around Stiles and tell his little kiddo that everything was going to be alright. But he couldn’t.  
He wished his son wasn’t stuck in this hopeless, awful situation. It is every parent’s worst nightmare, one day you send your kid off to school, looking safe and sound and the next day your son’s face ends up on the news. Even now, sometimes Sheriff was afraid that Stiles’ apparitions were just a figment of his grieving mind. However, the Sheriff would never give up on his son. But even though he knew, that as a father, he was doing everything he could, he didn’t know if he would figure out Stiles’s location soon enough.

“Are you sure this teacher isn’t in league with your jailer?” the Sheriff warned.

Stiles thought of his Domina’s oath to protect him, how she had held him after his rape, and protected him from the guards as he walked through the halls.  
“I’m sure,” he said with conviction.

“Then,” the Sheriff answered, you have to do everything you can to save yourself. I know you don’t want to kill anyone, but some people are monsters. This man, this jailer, he ripped you from me and locked you up for how the world would be better off without him in it.”

“I know, “Stiles explained, “But I’m struggling. I have all these nightmares, dad, of waking up with blood on my hands.”

The Sheriff was unwavering, “You need to do whatever you can to get home Stiles. No one can judge you for doing whatever you need to do to save yourself. There is no honor among criminals. You cannot play by the rules.”

Stiles sighed; his shoulder’s bowed with the heavy weight of worry that a kid as young as him should never have to carry.  
“I know, dad, I know”

“Ok. “ The Sheriff turned to look at Stiles directly. “Promise me you’ll keep fighting for me. Don’t give up? Promise me.”

“I promise dad, I’ll find a way to get back home. I’ll talk to you in three days.” Stiles vowed.

 

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Before he drifted back into his own body, Stiles decided to visit Derek’s house. He wondered why the bond between them felt so weak and no longer throbbed with life. At first, Stiles thought his temporary insanity had irreversibly damaged the bond. But that answer didn’t make sense to him. Why was Derek so distant?

Stiles appeared in Derek’s room, and saw the big comfy bed with its deep blue bedspread and the white walls he had complained were too bare.  
He saw Derek’s treasured face, murmuring in his sleep, his brow soft and relaxed.  
It was only when he had fully entered the room that he realized Derek was not the only one in the bed.

Her red hair was splayed across the pillow case, shocking red against the dark blue. Her heart shaped face was turned away from Derek, her legs still tangled in the blanket.

Stiles heard his heart crack slowly second by second. Nothing, he felt, would ever mend this pain.

“So quickly? Instead of looking for him all this time, Derek was… sleeping with some stupid bitch? What about their irreversible bond? Was all the stuff about being “soul-mates” some pretty lies Derek didn’t care about? How could Derek betray him like this?

Stiles knew he should feel the burn in his soul of betrayal, the echo, the resounding ache of his loss. But Stiles felt nothing.

He felt numb.

 

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The fourth day, Stiles entered Elissa’s room again.

“Have you given any thought to what I suggested?” Elissa questioned.

“Yes,” Stiles replied, “I want to kill Deucalion”.

Elissa allowed herself a small smile. It was beautiful to watch her plan slowly fall into place.

“Well, good,” Elissa affirmed. 

“Because I want to destroy Deucalion utterly. completely. and you are going to help me do that. You help me bring Deucalion down and I will make sure you get home in one piece,” Elissa promised.

Stiles’s eyes narrowed.

“I want a magical vow from you,” Stiles insisted, listening to the tiny part of his mind that did not trust Elissa.

Elissa vowed.

But it didn’t matter whether she swore or not, Elissa wasn’t afraid of breaking oaths. 

 

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

That night, Elissa heard a knock on her door. When she opened her door, she saw Anna, clad in a blue nightdress, her luminous gray eyes glowing in the dark, brown hair surrounding her face like a halo.  
Elissa grumbled and rubbed her eyes.  
“Yes, sister?” Elissa groused.  
Anna stared at her older sister for a long time.  
“Can I talk to you? About Stiles?” Anna finally asked after a long silence.  
A flicker of irritation crossed Elissa’s face.  
“Come in,” she offered in a tone that was anything but inviting,  
Anna sat down on the bare floor, arranging her long dress around her. Elissa sat on the bed, looking down at her younger sister.  
“What’s your business with Stiles, Anna?” Elissa asks pointedly, “your only job was to feed him and make sure he didn’t try to escape. That’s it.”  
Anna looked down on the ground and bit her lip, nervous fingers playing with the hem of her nightgown. Then she started speaking in a low voice, “A year ago, I had to treat Stiles when he was raped, by one of Deucalion’s disgusting soldiers,” she began.  
“A very unfortunate occurrence,” Elissa replied emotionlessly.  
“What I’ve been trying to understand is…. as Stiles’s Domina, you always know where he is at all times. You should have been able to feel through the sacred bond between master and student that something was wrong…” Anna trailed off.  
“And so?” Elissa remarked callously.  
Anna cringed, but the callousness in his sister’s tone helped her find her voice.  
“Did you allow Stiles to get _raped_ just to awaken his powers?” Anna accused.  
Elissa chuckled humorlessly. “I didn’t allow it, dear, I planned it.”  
Anna felt like all the words had been sucked from her mouth.  
“Why? Why would you do such a horrible things?” Anna asked breathlessly.  
“Should I have waited to see whether Stiles would find himself before Deucalion decided to actually turn him into a whore? You know that trauma is the best way to awaken a mage’s true power” Elissa snarled.  
“There are better ways, sister! Not everything in magic has to be done by blood and sweat and tears! You stole something from that boy, something innocent that he can never recover. Shame on you Elissa! A Domina is supposed to protect her charge not destroy his body and mind because his magical development is happening fast enough! You know what that’s like. After all we’ve been through. How could you?” Anna sobbed heartbrokenly.  
“What _we’ve_ been through? Of course. I would never expect you to understand,” Elissa stated coldly.  
‘Understand what?” Anna questioned.  
“You know when I woke to my powers Anna? I was five and you were just 1 year old, not old enough to remember much. But I can’t forget watching the wolves drag off our mother kicking and screaming and tear her apart in front of my eyes, leaving a trail of blood from our kitchen to our front door. I could see everything from the cupboard where we were hidden. And I didn’t have any to comfort me through my dark night, no, I lay next to mother’s dead body for days, Anna, unable to understand why my mother would not wake up. And then I awakened,” Elissa recounted.  
“Awakenings don’t have to be nightmares Elissa,” Anna argued, “what happened to mom was awful, but that’s no excuse for what you have done.”  
Elissa rolled her eyes, “of course I would expect nothing less from you, Anna. Peace and love and healing right? How must it feel like to see the world with such rose-colored glasses?” Elissa stood up, agitatedly pacing.  
“The world is a cruel place, Anna. No one is looking out for you. No one is there to watch your back. People are selfish, stupid and petty, quick to move on without you. I was able to shield you from some of the worst of it when we were growing up, but now I see I was wrong to protect you. Humans are tools, Anna. Use them, and manipulate them. It is better to be feared than loved.”  
Anna jumped up as soon as she heard Elissa’s last few words.  
“Look at you, you sound exactly like Nick!”  
Elissa whipped back to face Anna, “ Don’t you ever say such a thing to me again,” Elissa threatened quietly.  
Anna replied, “He always loved that saying, “it is better to be feared than loved.” And that’s what he did, create fear, use people as tools. He ripped our autonomy away, bound our magic to his in a slavery that encompassed our minds and souls, destroyed everything and everyone we loved. You sound like our first Domine, Elissa. Think about whether that’s the kind of person you want to be,” Anna finished.  
Anna began to walk towards the door, “And also,” Anna added, “I heard about this whole plot to kill King Deucalion. Stop using Stiles as your sacrificial pawn. You’ve hurt him enough. If I ever hear of you hurting Stiles again, I will end you,” Anna warned.  
Elissa screamed “You don’t have the right to threaten me you stupid little nothing. What do you think you could do to me, when I taught you everything you know? How dare you presume to come to my room and judge my actions? You have no right.”  
Anna opened Elissa’s door and said calmly, “I don’t even know who you are anymore”.  
The door shut, leaving Elissa fuming in darkness.

 

********************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Most battles are won even before they start. The difference is in the wind, the strategy, the numbers of the opposing armies and the wiliness of the general. Planning a coup is no less elaborate.

To set a trap for a man, you must first understand him. Understand his psychology, how he thinks, acts and feels.  
So Stiles and Elissa began attending Deucalion’s court.

Deucalion’s court worked in a hierarchical manner.  
At the top was Deucalion, the king and the ruler of his pack. Below him was his chief beta, Evan. Evan was someone Deucalion trusted instinctively, because both were brothers born of the same mother and father. While Deucalion was the speaker and the figurehead of the pack, Evan was Deucalion’s chief strategist, his right hand man, and his greatest confidante. When Deucalion refused to listen to other wolves or his chief advisers, one word from Evan could change his mind.  
Under Evan was Deucalion’s war guild. The war guild was composed of five packs, the northern wolves, the wolves of the steps, the island pack, the mountain pack and the plains pack. Each pack’s alpha had a seat at Deucalion’s table, a seat that was won by swearing allegiance to Deucalion and bringing a fighting force of at least 30-45 wolves. Each wolf pack was organized hierarchically, Alpha, Beta, Deltas, Gammas, Epsilons and Omegas. Humans ranked under wolves on this totem pole. Any humans associated with the pack were used as cooks, cleaners or bed-warmers. Humans had no rights and could be used and disposed of by any wolf. Most humans in Deucalion’s court were captives from wolf raids. Mages and witches were solitary and not bound by the rigid pack hierarchy.  
Every week Deucalion would hold court. Only humans and wolves in high standing were allowed to enter. Therefore, the court encompassed only about 125 people. The five alphas would tell him about army exercises and troop movements. Deucalion would preside over ceremonies awarding medals to good hunters or wolves that moved up the ranks. And then, sometimes, Deucalion would speak. Deucalion had a ringing voice, carrying over the entire court of humans and wolves, a voice that cut to your heart and sent it flying over the aisles. When Deucalion spoke, the audience listened. Where Deucalion led, everyone followed.  
On this day, Deucalion stood up regally and flashed his eyes alpha red before the court for silence.  
“I stand before you today, as man and wolf. We, as werewolves have been shunned by human society, relegated to fairy tale stories and movies. We live in terror of humanity’s strength, their numbers, of being found, captured and killed. Our ancestors, the great wolves who created the earth used to roam free over all of our territory, bound by only the sun and the stars, hunting and pillaging as we wished; but then the humans surged up in strength, with their guns and their bombs, we wolves went from being a feared force to a mythology, a dream erased from all history books. Our young cubs grow up in silence and shame unable to walk free and show the truth of themselves to others. This is not the way it should be,”

Here Deucalion paused and the entire room hung on his words.

“ I ask you wolves here today, what do we offer our children? Would we have our children be dogs,” Deucalion spat with disdain, “servants at the feat of their human overloads? I ask you how many times must we lose our sons and daughters to ruthless hunters who destroy our packs without regard for justice, for kindness, for mercy? We, wolves were not made to creep in the shadows, but to rule over the pastures and meadows, over the mountains and plains, from every sea, valley, this land is ours!”

Deucalion raised up his hands as his voice thundered, “Now is the time for battle. Now is the time to use our collective might and crush humanity and their modernity. Their disgusting trains and cars and houses, their cities which clutter the edges of our land like diseased creatures hulking in the dark. Like vermin they multiply over the face of the planet, breed and breed and there is no end to them. In three months from now, we will strike. We have managed to learn how to use their machines, their tanks and their bombs. We have assembled fighting forces of wolves to strike. And we will destroy their most trusted leaders. Instead of living within the stupid boundaries they have given us, the stupid reservations, the tiny plots of free spaces we own, hedged at the outside of cities, we will be boundless again. As the great wolf spirit meant us to be!”  
Deucalion began to pace.  
“So how many of you are ready? Do you wish to cower in fear as the hunters kill your young cubs? Would you rather the chains of baseless slavery instead of the liberty and freedom? Would you rather cower like human scum or stand tall and proud as a wolf? Who is with me?”

The entire hall exploded with applause. Werewolves stood, filled with pride. Howls echoed throughout the room as Stiles watched.  
Stiles was left feeling fear resonating in a pit in his stomach. He no longer held doubts about whether Deucalion needed to be killed.

He now knew in the deepest marrow of his soul, Deucalion must be stopped.

Over the course of the next week, Stiles and Elissa developed a plan to destroy Deucalion’s and his court utterly and salt his ashes.

 

*************************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

Stiles had two weeks before the year’s end. Sometimes Stiles was able to catch a glimpse of the blinding white snow when he had the rare chance to escape from his underground room.

Stiles’s work continued nonstop. Now, Stiles not only had to focus on his improving his defensive spellwork; but he had to obsess about learning every detail about how Deucalion’s armies worked and the castle’s defenses.  
To make things worse, Elissa had begun to teach Stiles dark magic.  
Now most magic is neutral, neither black nor white, neither dark nor light, tainted with the mage’s wants and the recipients desires. Very few spells are ever light or dark.  
Truth magic, or as it was called by the mages, _ignilux_ , was the opposite dark magic, called _Sinistre_.  
Good magic, or the sort practiced by white witches was called truth magic because it was created with a respect for the surroundings and the people affected by the magic. With truth magic one cannot maim or destroy because there is never any justification for harming an innocent life. Stiles had read the “White Witches Compendium” written by High Priestess Lucretia in 1792 when he was learning ignilux. Ignilux feels bright, and light in one’s veins. A mage’s whole body sings with the rightness of it, burning with joy and clarity.  
Ignilux was the magic of healing, of fixing and putting everything into its proper place. Anna was a master of this magic, but Stiles had only a cursory chance to learn a few spells before Elissa moved on to other types of magic.

Now Elissa was teaching him the Sinistre.  
The first day, when Stiles walked into Elissa’s room and saw her book made of blood and bone, he felt a terror burn slowly in his chest.  
“Now, it is time for you to learn of the SInistre,” Elissa announced.  
Stiles wanted to protest.  
Over the last year, he had learned that one does not protest against their Domina. In a Domina –mageling relationship, the Domina’s words are law, and she is to be treated with the utmost respect and deference. The vow he had made in the beginning of the year, still held, She was his only guide through the world of exusia, he was not to argue with her. Mages had a very hierarchical society, in this way.

But Stiles was afraid.  
And even though he knew he shouldn’t argue with his Domina, he tried to anyway, “Domina,” Stiles questioned, “Why is it necessary that I learn dark magic? I can defend myself enough with Ignilux and escape from any fight necessary. Please don’t make me learn this.”

“Fine, “Elissa smiled a smile like the sliver of a crescent scythe,  
She raised her hands to the ceiling and called out _“Ara negra”_ and black lightning shot from her fingertips.  
With a ball of black lightening hovering over her left hand, she beckoned Stiles with her right  
“Fight me,” She challenged.  
The black lightening flashed across the room towards Stiles, in the split of a second and Stiles had about 15 seconds to reacts.  
Stiles quickly formed a shield of protection around his body, woven with spells he had made himself and took a moment to think about his attack.  
 _Magnetitium_ , he called, and then in the so tone of creation, formed a magnetic stick from the air, with which to conduct the lightning.  
As the magnetic wand materialized and the lightning was conducted downwards, Elissa remained calm,  
 _Korriri_ she said, making an x with her left and right palms.  
Stiles was hit by a wave of pure hatred, so intense that it ripped through his protective shield and burned straight into his chest, the spell set his entire body on fire, caused his blood to boil under his skin.

Stiles screamed and responded by calling upon the norse rune of protection he kept hidden on a necklace under his shirt. He clutched the Algiz rune , praying for the curse to stop. as the Algiz rune, slowly caused the curse’s power to ebb, Elissa released another imprecation, _“Despai”_ , she whispered.

Stiles was overcome by a wave of the most intense despair he had ever known. A depression so dark, all he could do was feel the pain of loss of hopelessness, he felt himself crumble to the floor, remembering the cage underground how he had felt after the 50th day and no one had come to find him, the intense worthlessness of it all…… He felt himself shuddering.

As he shook, Elissa’s voice came from above.

“Now, I have you in a position where I could kill you, maim you and capture you, and it only took two spells. There are stupid mages out there who think the Sinistre is such evil magic that no mage should be allowed to know of it. They all are, of course, dead. If you want to stay alive in the upcoming fight, you need to learn how to wield Sinistre, and walk in darkness,” Elissa explained.

As the despair lightened, Stiles lay on the floor,trembling.

“Get up,” Elissa ordered, “ I think one of your philosophers said it best, “ A revolution is not a dinner party,” 

Grumbling under his breath Stiles swore, “That was Mao Zedong”….

So unwillingly, Stiles learned the ways of darkness.  
He learned to maim and kill how to choke the life from another person’s lungs or make them feel like they were drowning in torrents of despair. He learned jinxes that caused bad luck, hexes that led to blindness or deafness and curses that would follow destroy a man and everything they loved. Stiles learned how to summon the minor demons and became acquainted with the realms of hell. Throughout all of this, Stiles felt a darkness stealing upon his soul.  
At night, Stiles walked through a grassy plain filled with rows and rows of dead bodies packed side to side, eyes open unseeingly, mouth agape in one last scream, laughing. After he had the dream a few times, Stiles started to take sleeping draughts in order to get rest.

For the first time, in a long while, Stiles was afraid of who he was becoming.

He spoke with his father less and less, because he felt ashamed. What could he tell his father?  
 _Well, dad, today I learned, how cast a spell that kills not it’s target, but the person it’s target loves the most? I also learned how to make someone’s blood boil inside of them, a curse to strip the skin off a human, keeping them alive all through the pain? Aren’t you proud of me?”_

When Stiles did speak to his father through his dreams, he asked very typical questions aand only had monosyllabic answers.

Every time the Sheriff would ask Stiles where he was being hidden, Stiles would answer dumbly, “ I don’t know”.  
The Sheriff would then, seeing his son’s silence and anxious face, ask if Stiles was being tortured.

Stiles always replied, “No”.

But that was a lie.

Learning dark magic is the most exquisite for of torture, since magic is reciprocal, a little bit of the horror one invokes in other’s comes back to haunt you.  
Stiles could not name the number of times he woke up sweating from a nightmare or staggered to his room after a particularly tough session so he could throw up in the toilet.  
Sometimes he cried himself to sleep.Anna would come and check on him, his only solace, his light magic a warm and subtle balm to his pain. She would say nothing and look at him in sorrow, powerless to interfere in the relationship between Domina and mageling.

After a few weeks of anguish, Stiles changed. He started to feel pleasure in the casual cruelty of dark magic. It was so interesting to watch, dispassionate, as Elissa demonstrated how with the Contorsio spell, one could cause the contorsion of a man’s limbs, giving the same effect as one who was stretched on a rack. He could feel the dark power building up in him, filling him with a kind of ecstasy in its evil, a delight in the depths of his power.

It was once such day, after Stiles had easily performed a Cruciatus curse with a bit too much glee that Elissa stated, “You’re ready.”

Stiles had been looking at his hands, which were as white and thin as ever, but carried so much within them.  
At is Domina’s words, Stiles looked up.  
“For what? What am I ready for?”

Elissa replied gravely, “To meet Deucalion and show him your strength as a mage… so we can proceed with phase two.”

Stiles nodded solemnly.

“Go to sleep, Stiles, I’ll see you in the morning” Elissa suggested with a note of grimness in her voice.

 

*******************************************************************************************************************************************************************************

The next day Stiles met Elissa in her room. Together they walked to Deucalion’s training grounds.

Deucalion was half shifted and sparring with a red wolf from the northern tribe. Their swords clashed against each other, ringing throughout the plains.

After a few moments, Deucalion found an opening, but instead of hitting the wolf with the flat of his sword, Deucalion jumped up, and threw his opponent down to ground, closing his jaws over the red wolf’s neck.

“Yield,” Deucalion declared lazily.

The wolf dropped its tail and head in submission.  
“I yield,” it answered.

Deucalion faced a bigger red wolf watching in the crowd, 

“You need to train these wolves to be able to react to surprise attacks. But not only that, your wolves are fighting like men, with swords and, what? guns? They need to fight like wolves. Use teeth and claws and roars to strike fear into the heart of men. The training you are giving these wolves is not sufficient to….” Deucalion trailed off as Elissa entered the arena.

“Ah, Elissa, Good morning,” Deucalion greeted politely, “What brings you to our training ground this morning?”

Elissa looked at Deucalion fearlessly, “A year ago, I took the spark you gave me, that worthless boy and made him something useful, Deucalion. I know you’ve always wanted a mage of your own, to help and protect you in your movements. Let this boy be my gift to you,”

Stiles stepped forward. He had protected his face with a blue hood, now he threw his hood down and revealed himself.

“What can he do?” Deucalion asked, his eyes still fixed on Elissa.

“Whatever you want,” Elissa answered.

“Well, Well,” Deucalion replied, walking up to Stiles and holding Stiles’s chin between his thumb and forefinger, “ I thought you would only be good as a bedwarmer after your stay with us, but the witch says you have power?”

Deucalion smiled menacingly, “Is that true?”

“Yes sir.” Stiles asserted without fear in his voice.

Deucalion backed away from Stiles and dropped into a defensive crouch,  
“Prove it,” Deucalion insisted.

And before Stiles could respond, Deucalion was flying at him, claws open and ready to swipe.

Immediately, Stiles covered himself with a defensive shield made blue light, weaved invoking protection from harm.

Deucalion touched the shield with a claw and was sent flying backwards onto his back.

The Wolf King growled in anger, “Fight me like a man, no stupid shields,”

Stiles looked at Elissa for guidance.

She gave him the tiniest of nods.  
Stiles dropped the shield and called fire to his palms, dropping into the first position, flame stance as easy as breathing.  
Stiles rained flames where Deucalion stood, but each time the flame came close to Deucalion, Deucalion jumped away, avoiding the worst of the flames.

One of the wolf soldiers watching the spectacle threw Deucalion a sword.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” taunted Deucalion.

Stiles felt his cheeks heat up in anger but swallowed those feelings. One cannot work magic in anger; magic must come from a place of deliberate calm, coolness.

Stiles let his fire fizzle out and waited, watching to see what Deucalion would do next.

Deucalion took advantage of Stiles’s moment of motionlessness to run at Stiles, swinging the sword over his head, yelling victoriously.  
It was at that moment, that Stiles knew he would win.

Stiles toyed with Deucalion, letting him get very close and then as soon as Deucalion got within striking distance of Stiles, he trapped the wolf in a circle of black flames.

From there, Stiles used one of the first spells he had been exposed to; it seemed almost a lifetime ago.

Stiles made a fist,  
 _Kok_ Stiles said in a ringing tone.

Raising his fist, Stiles levitated Deucalion off the ground, leaving the Wolf King dangling nearly 8 feet above the ground.

Stiles tightened his fist.

“Is this enough to show you how worthy I am Wolf King? I could kill you with a twist of my hand and a word, destroy your life without even getting blood on the floor,” Stiles felt the thrum of power singing through him, crashing through his veins, every word, every ounce of power, left him feeling incandescent with joy.  
 _Reles_ Stiles whispered under his breath,

Then Stiles fell onto his knees, he and Elissa had practiced this many times before.

“But I only want to serve you, Great Wolf King. Protect you and help increase your power. Please accept me as your servant, Deucalion and let me be your shield from misfortune and disaster. Let me become something more than a stupid human. I want to be your mage,”

With these words, Stiles pressed his forehead to the ground, in mute obeisance.

Deucalion gasped and panted for a few seconds and then walked over to Stiles’s prostrate form. With a touch of benediction on his head, Deucalion spoke slowly, “I accept.”

Stiles knew that Deucalion had just sealed his fate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I waited a while to add this chapter. I wanted to write a very long chapter but I'm afraid I didn't have time to polish any grammar mistakes. I can barely see straight while writing this. I will probably edit all the chappies later. Please comment, when you comment, a little good luck magic is sent from my computer to yours.  
> and here's a scene from the next chapter ( unfinshed though).
> 
> Esto es lo peor ( And this is worse):
> 
> Stiles watched Deucalion signal to the rest of his court, "Let the food and feasting begin!"  
> Deucalion lifted the golden goblet decorated with grapes and horns of plenty.  
> Stiles tensed in anticipation as Deucalion slowly brought the cup to his lips.


	10. Water has no enemy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> dub con maybe or sex to achieve an end.

_“Be like water,” Elissa’s voice resounded trough his head, “Be whatever he wants you to be”_

So when Deucalion wanted to torture men for information, Stiles never said no.

When Deucalion asked Stiles to look into the future to see if there wolves would have certain victory, Stiles said that victory was assured even though he could see no end to Deucalion’s venture but chaos.

When Deucalion asked Stiles to please him, Stiles kissed sweet words into the wolf’s mouth and moaned convincingly around the man’s cock as it speared him open.

In the small practice skirmishes Deucalion had against other wolves, Stiles covered Deucalion with one of his hand woven shields, a bubble of purple magic energy shimmering around the Wolf King, and after Deucalion was hot and sweaty from battle, Stiles soothed away his aches, massaged his muscles and kissed his bruises.  
Anyone who saw Stiles and Deucalion together would think that they loved each other; but all Stiles could do was look for the opening he would need to carry out his plan.

It came one day during a practice sparring. Chief Indim was sparring against Deucalion. The fight was fast and furious and for many minutes neither wolf had the lead.

Then, Stiles caught the Chief raising his claw to hit Deucalion with a decisive blow that would win him the match.  
Stiles made a cutting motion with his hand _“ixcisso_  
The man fell to the ground, ripped apart by Stiles’s magic.  
Ethan, Deucalion’s right hand, looked at Stiles with horror. “Murder!,” Ethan crowed.  
“Grab him and bring him to me!” Ethan ordered the wolves nearest to Stiles.  
Stiles was brought before Ethan.   
Stiles dropped to his knees and fixed Deucalion with a pleading eye, “I am so sorry Alpha. I thought he was going to kill you. I only wanted to protect you,” Stiles sobbed convincingly.

“He’s lying!” Ethan cried. 

Deucalion looked at Stiles’s fallen form, “No he’s not. Stiles would never do anything to harm me,” Deucalion said reassuringly.

“I only wish to please you Alpha,” Stiles murmured. _so I can survive and kill you_ Stiles thought. But his statement was enough truth to get him out of hot water.

“I will discipline my slave,” Deucalion ordered.

Ethan bared his teeth, “ this filthy mage has destroyed one of our most valiant wolves. How could you show him mercy?” he snarled.

Deucalion flashed his red eyes at Ethan.  
“Remember your place, Beta”.

The sheer dominance Deucalion exuded caused Ethan to cower in a humiliating display if subservience, head back, neck exposed.

 

As Stiles followed Deucalion’s retreating back, he glanced back at Ethan and smirked at the bowing wolf.

“Remember your place, dog,” Stiles snickered.

There, Stiles thought, that should give Elissa enough to work with. The thought gave him comfort as the Alpha punished him, as the pain sang in his mind.

Over the next few weeks, the court changed. Chief Indim was one of the most respected Plains wolves and also Ethan’s deepest childhood friend. The court was edgy around Stiles, angry, sharp words thrown when Stiles was out of earshot. Quiet mutters as Stiles passed by.  
Stiles knew his position was even more precarious, so he doubled his efforts in the bedroom, sucking Deucalion’s cock every night and whispering sweet nothings into his ear.

Ethan came to court, pretending that nothing had changed, but rumor had it that he had been spending more time with Elissa, staying up late at night in her rooms, talking like dear lovers.

Deucalion, lost without Ethan’s guidance, began to increasingly rely on Stile’s counsel.

“People doubt my ability to lead us as King. They think I have waited for this true alpha too long. They tire of stalling and desire battle,” Deucalion asked Stiles late at night one day.  
“What shall I do?’ Deucalion questioned.

Stiles replied easily. “Never acquiesce to anyone’s demands or they will see you as weak. Find the ones who are muttering against your rule and make an example of them like the Strong and ruthless king I love”

Surprisingly, Deucalion took Stiles’s advice. The new ruthless Deucalion further alienated his court and diminished the good will of the other wolves.   
The day Elissa wore a robe of black to the court Stiles knew it was time. Deucalion had ordered a feast tomorrow to celebrate the beginning of the wolves’ campaign to end humankind.  
That night, when the servant brought the dinner tray up, Stiles asked her for an extra pitcher of water.   
As she passed him the pitcher, she slipped a small packet into his sleeve.

The day of the banquet had come. The hall was loud and noisy. Warm; heated by three large roaring fires placed strategically around the room. A huge table was covered with a damask white tablecloth, was topped with every delicacy one could imagine, turkeys dripping with gravy, a wild boar, cornucopias of fruit and bowls of peas, and other steamed vegetables for the humans, who had been allowed to eat with the wolves for the first time. Stiles was sitting on Deucalion’s left side, wearing elaborate red robes.  
On Stiles’s neck stood a bright red claiming mark. The night after Stiles had submitted himself to Deucalion, Deucalion had claimed him, sinking wolf teeth into the soft flesh of Stile’s neck and making marks that would never fade. Letting everyone know that Stiles was his property. Stiles rubbed his fingers over the unsightly bruise, it would all be over soon

Deucalion raised his wine cup. “I am so proud to announce to you all the beginning of our campaign. Let us eat and drink and be merry, we will feast again in the halls of the wolf king!”  
Stiles watched Deucalion’s soft, defensible throat as he gulped down the sweet red wine.  
Not yet.

That would be too suspicious.  
The tables began to eat. Stiles picked at his food, barely touching is drink. Stiles often had a terrible appetite.  
Midway through the meal, Deucalion noticed Stile’s listlessness.“You’re wasting good wine, “ Deucalion chided, “eat!”  
Stiles looked at Deucalion tiredly,” I don’t feel so well”   
_The next move must not come from me_ Stiles thought hoping against hope.

“Well, we can’t let all this fine wine go to waste, can we?” Deucalion remarked.

Deucalion picked up Stiles’s goblet and threw it back in one gulp.

And began to choke, and gasp, stomach twisting.

“I’ve been poisoned” he gasped.

There was pandemonium, wolves rushed to the Kings side.

but about 3/4ths of the wolves remained in their seats.

Ethan walked to the dying form of the King, seated on his dais.  
“You once told me to remember my place, Alpha. and I thought I lead your armies. I write your strategies; yes I still have to bow down to you because you are my alpha. and my beloved brother. and even worse, you’d rather take the word of your whore over my advice. No more,”

Ethan closed his hands over Deucalion’s throat.

“beg me for mercy, you stupid thing. Beg me and I might let you live.”

Even to the last, Deucalion was defiant. “I will never bow down for you, you blood-traitor. Kill me if you wish”

Ethan squeezed is fists around his brother’s throat, slowly crushing the alpha to death. As the alpha gasped his last breath, Ethan’s eyes turned bright blue.

“Does anyone wish to challenge me now?” He dared the court.

In the midst of the pandemonium, Stiles had slipped out of the court, and grabbed his a small pack he had assembled with all the books he wanted to keep, and some food. Slinging it onto his back, he ram desperately through the stone hallways and down a flight of stairs to reach the basement door. Pressing his fingers to the door, Stiles whispered, “abri porte”. The door opened noiselessly.

swallowing the taste of sweet, cold air, Stiles felt invigorated, energy raced through his blood as he thought of the fact that home was so close to him, that soon, he would be able to see his father and his friends again.  
Look at the vast forest, Stiles pulled out a compass Elissa had given him and ran.  
His feet thudded through grass, muscles burned and his throat ached. He looked at the compass, as it spun, pointing him true north. Even as he grew tired, he refused to stop.  
 _Must escape. Must run. Wolves will be coming any moment. must never never stop_  
Finally, Stiles came to a large clearing, the ground was icy with snow, trees stood bare shadows of themselves, clustered around the plain, a single snowflake melted on his jacket. A fence surrounded the perimeter of the plain. Directly north of Stiles stood a metal iron gate, a little rust, but sturdy all the same.  
Stiles stopped to catch his breath.  
The compass glowed bright red.  
Stiles looked up, his dark brown eyes flickering upwards, and smiled. Elissa had explained to him that those gates marked the edge of the wolves’ territory. Due to the feasting, and the subsequent massacre,the guardian wolves had left their posts, and the gate lay undefended. One mile from those gates lay the town of Little falls. Once he got into town, he could find a phone and call his father, and this nightmare would end.  
in a few seconds, he would be free.  
Stiles’s eyebrows furrowed determinedly as he sprinted across the field. He could smell the coffee. He could smell the taste and feel of home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have had trouble writing this one, partially because I was dying to get to the next part because the next part is going to be so painful and gripping that it's going to hurt. Finally we'll get a better understanding of why Stiles in the present is so bitter and angry and not acting like himself anymore.  
> Also,I'm sorry about the grammar errors, I will fix them later, I just wanted to get this chapter over with .  
> As always, because I plan to rewrite this stuff, I relish your comments like a perfectly browned hot dog topped with ketchup mustard and relish after a long workday.


	11. An Expected Betrayal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The titles says it all. Nothing bad here yet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set up for next chapter

Stiles reached the gate and his heart thudding in his chest, his left hand lifted to open the gate and froze in midair. He stared at his hand in confusion and tried to kick with his right foot. he couldn’t move.  
What was happening to him? Was the gate protected by magic? He tried to calm his panicked breathing and reach a state of measured meditation; and think “How will I break the spell?”  
As he closed his eyes and tried not to have a panic attack; he heard a voice whisper under his ear.  
“Elissa?” he asked himself, shocked.  
Wild gold hair spread around her like a halo, Elissa nodded.  
“Stiles,” she greeted.  
Stiles tried to move his arm.  
“Can you help me here?” Stiles asked his Domina.  
Elissa sighed. “I’m afraid I can’t do that,” She said slowly.  
Stiles felt a stone of dread sink slowly to the bottom of his chest.  
“What do you mean, you can’t help me?” he asked alarmed. Elissa said nothing. Panic rose in Stiles, heart batting around his ribcage like a frantic moth.  
Elissa smiled grimly.  
“I’ve been waiting a long time for this, Stiles. When I was a young child, still unawakened, I watched Deucalion and his soldiers slaughter my father and rape my mother. I waited for 25 years. 25 years to get my revenge. But revenge came at a price. Ethan told mehe wanted a special reward for killing Deucalion. You,” Elissa finished.  
“You bitch”, Stiles swore, “I’ll never let him have me. I’ll kill him first.”

Elissa said nothing.

Placing her hand on Stile’s neck, she closed her eyes. Stiles felt nausea fill him as the world went black, color seemed to blur and spin out of control, and he heard voices calling to him in the darkness and images rushed past him at light speed.

When Stiles opened his eyes, he stood in Deucalion’s antechambers. Ethan was lounging on the bed, wearing a purple silk bathrobe. His dark hair cut short to his nape, ice blue eyes flashing with quiet malice.

Elissa stood beside him.

Stiles looked at her in astonishment.  
“I thought you said mages couldn’t teleport”

“I lied, Stiles” Elissa replied calmly. “Were you so stupid that you believed that magic, which can transform a man to a fish and cause giant flames to appear from thin air, can’t be used to teleport as well? Don’t be a fool. I just didn’t want you to leave, because I needed you for this.”

As Stiles stood, transfixed, Elissa pulled out an athame from the pocket of her dress. An athame is a two handed blade, often used in witchcraft. It represents dualities, light/dark, feminine/masculine, evil and good.

With a flick of her wrist, Elissa drew a line across Stiles’s palm and drained his blood into a silver bowl.

With a twitch of her finger, she beckoned Ethan, and using the athame, cut the back of his hand with the business end of the knife. Blood mixed in the silver bowl.

With eyes closed, Elissa began to chant. Stiles didn’t understand all of the words, but he was able to pick out the words “inferiorus” and “Superiorus”. His mind slowly tried to comprehend all that had happened to him, the stunning betrayal of his Domina. What did those words mean? he asked himself. As the spell continued, he felt like his blood was boiling under his skin, something tunneling through his mind, through his body, down to depths of his soul. After a few minutes, the chanting was over. Stiles gasped as he felt exhaustion burn through him.

Ethan looked at Elissa with a smug smile on his face.  
“So he’s mine now?” he asked.

”Do with him as you wish”, Elissa replied dispassionately.

Ethan turned his cold gaze to Stile’s face.

“Take off your clothes”

Stiles opened his mouth to form the words no, reached for his magic which usually answered him like a faithful dog.

And found his fingers slowly peeling off his clothes as if he had no mind of his own.

“No,” Stiles whispered, “No. no. no”.

Elissa simply nodded and slowly walked away.

Before she left the room, she turned around one last time to look at her charge, the unawakened mage she had sworn to protect. Stiles stood transfixed, naked. The boy’s eyes were filled with tears as he quivered slightly. She felt a tiny whisper of regret stir in her as she left Stiles in Ethan’s clutches, but she squashed the pains she felt.

Regret was for weak men and frail women. She was neither of these.


	12. A season in Hell, part 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not for the faint of heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: fun, fun, fun. rape, torture, violence, mind control

Stiles closed his eyes as Ethan fucked him. He had lost track of nights or days, everything had turned into one endless circle of torture. He had cried so many times that he no longer had the breath for crying, his throat was raw.

He was dying inside.

Stiles prayed for death, even death was better than this agony.

The first night, Ethan had taken him to his bed and raped him.

Brutally. It had felt even worse than what the soldier had done to him long time agony, because as Ethan raped him, he made Stiles feel pleasure, the most intense, heart pumping orgasms. And Stiles was forced to watch as his body betrayed him.

“You slutty whore,” Ethan swore into Stiles’s ear as Stiles braced himself against the wall, trying not to cry out from Ethan’s harsh thrusts.  
“You love it, don’t you? Tell me how much you love it, dear” Stiles sobbed quietly, but he felt his mind build up with pressure as he tried to resist the compulsion.  
“I love it so much master” Stiles whispered.  
“Is that how you show you love your master? With a weak whisper? Louder, you worthless whore,” Ethan demanded.  
“I love you fucking me master. Please fuck me some more. I need it crave it,” Stiles screamed.  
“Better” Ethan grinned.  
Stiles closed his eyes as he tried to drift somewhere else for a few seconds of peace.  
Finally, he felt the heavy breath on his neck and the coldness inside his ass which told Stiles Ethan was done. Stiles quietly folded himself back into kneeling position near Ethan’s throne. The wolves of the court didn’t bat an eyelash.  
By now, Stiles was immune to the humiliation. He just wished he could sleep.

Every night, Ethan invaded Stile’s dreams. The connection Elissa created between Stiles and Ethan allowed the wolf to have access to the most intimate thoughts Stiles had.  
Whenever he slept, Ethan would torture Stiles, forcing Stiles to relive all the rapes and humiliations of the day in his dreams. Then, Ethan would force Stile to relive the day Stiles had killed Chief Indim over and over again, each time, feeling the grief Ethan felt.”This is why I am doing this to you, Stiles. Because you are a faithless, betraying sack of shit who killed a good wolf. I am going to torture you for the rest of your days. I will never let you die”

At one point, Stiles had found a way to make it almost bearable, he would drift away while Ethan was raping him or in the moments when Ethan had Stiles to a place in mind, a specific memory of him and Derek on Derek’s birthday. He would remember what it felt like to be cherished, loved.

One day, Ethan noticed Stiles’s blank look. “Look at me, you magic whore”, Ethan growled.  
Stiles looked at Ethan, Ethan pierced a claw under Stiles’s skin and entered Stile’s mind.   
All the intimate beautiful moments Stiles shared with Derek?

Violated.

Every happy second he had with his mother?

tarnished.

All the hugs he had from his father, secrets he had told Scott, the stupid crush he had on Lydia.

Was no longer his own.

That was the first moment in which Stiles truly wanted to die.

After that, the torture only became worse.

Not only was Stiles raped and beaten at will, Ethan would torture Stiles by destroying Stile’s happy memories.  
He found it fun to punish Stiles by taking memories away if he didn’t like Stiles’s blowjobs or if Stiles wasn’t enthusiastic enough in begging for sex.  
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Stiles sobbed, “I’m really sorry Ethan, I’ll try to do better. Please, don’t do this. I’ll do anything, please. I’ll never bite again”

Ethan tutted, “No Stiles, I told you not to let me feel any teeth in your blowjob. I told you what would happen if you did this”

Stiles opened teary brown eyes to beg his master, “I swear if you just give me this one chance Ethan, I will never disappoint you again”  
Ethan frowned, “Are you sure you’ll listen when I say “no more biting”

Stile’s face was lit with a glimmer of hope, “Yes. I promise.”

“Okay,” Ethan murmured and gathered Stile’s bony form up into his arms.

Stiles gave a sigh of relief.  
A sharp pain pierced his arm.  
“Just kidding” Ethan chuckled.

And just like that, Stile’s favorite memory of the time had celebrated Derek’s birthday with sex. The sweetness of the chocolate cake’s velvet softness.

Gone.

After Ethan took the memory, Stiles simply sat, feeling something was missing but he didn’t know what.

That confused blank feeling became a fixture of Stile’s life with Ethan. Continually Stiles felt like there was an inch in his mind, he couldn’t quiet scratch.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

In a typical morning, Stiles would wake up Ethan with a blowjob, and then Ethan would fuck Stiles. It didn’t hurt now, not nearly as much as it used to and Stiles was grateful for that.  
Then Stiles would wash Ethan’s body and offer Ethan a second blowjob in the shower.  
Stiles had learned to dress Ethan in exactly the perfect way that Ethan wanted. He had learned quickly, because when he failed, he became blanker.  
Claw marks were scattered all over Stile’s body. Stiles knew each scar meant something had been taken from him. That was all he knew.

Then Ethan and Stiles would walk together to the court room. Instead of training and waiting for the appearance of the true alpha like Deucalion, Ethan had decided to go to war. The war had been starting slowly. Strange disappearances of hunters from Oregon to as far away as Vermont, Stiles would listen to the daily atrocities that were committed and worry about his father and Allison and Scott.

One day, two young children and their mother were dragged before Ethan. The mother’s face was grimy as if she had been rubbed in the dirt. Her dress was torn. The two children didn’t look older than ten. A gruff, fat werewolf announced, “I brought this worthless human and her children for punishment King Ethan”  
“The crime?”Ethan asked curtly.  
“I caught the stupid things stealing loaves of bread from my pantry” , the wolf explained.  
Under Deucalion, humans were not treated well, but Deucalion was never a wolf for gratuitous torture or displays of anger. He also believed that humans were like horses or other animal stock, and one did not mistreat valuable possessions. Ethan, was a different story. To Ethan, Humans were disgusting mongrel who deserved no mercy, no care, no tenderness, nothing but to be worked to the bone and then discarded when they were too much trouble.  
Stiles could testify that Ethan didn’t think mages were worth much more. He suspected that was why Elissa was keeping a low profile.

“Well, Well” Ethan rubbed his hands together,” that does call for some creative punishment. After all we need to make an example of this family, don’t we Stiles?”

Stiles glanced at Ethan, alarmed, “Yes master”

Ethan smiled wolfishly, “I want you to use that lovely power of yours to strangle this mother to death in front of her children”

Stile’s eyes widened. For the first time in a long time, he found his voice.

“NO. I can’t. I won’t do it.” The compulsion burned through his mind, Stiles desperately created walls to block it out. Stiles felt his hand rising.

Without shame, Stiles threw himself at Ethan’s feet. “Anything master, anything, but please not this”

Ethan watched Stile’s internal struggle, the tics flashing across Stiles face as he tried to beat the compulsion.

“Stiles get up and choke that woman” Ethan commanded, reinforcing the compulsion.

Stiles felt his hand raise, his fingers twist, as the magic he loved so much, the magic he thought would be his road to salvation was turned against him.

The woman scratched at her throat as if an invisible noose tightened around her throat. Gasping, she staring at Stiles for one second, her bulbous eyes pleading with him before she died.

The children began to wail.

“I hate the sound of whining children Stiles, tear them apart”

Stiles made a cross with his palms and muttered one word and the children’s bodies were torn apart. Stiles took one look at the entrails of the two children on the floor and their dead mother, so silent and gaunt.  
He felt himself trembling.

He looked into Ethan’s brown eyes and saw noting in there but pain and chaos

And Stiles could actually eel his sanity begin to slip, when his thoughts became water, and his mind was crowded with voices that no longer made sense.  
He became truly insane.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So tell me what you guys thought of this chapter? It was pretty intense and I'm kind fo struggling to see where I want it to go next. As always, every comment means I update one day earlier and every kudo warms the cockles of my poor heart.  
> I'm sorry for Stiles.:(


	13. A season in Hell: The Wasteland

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He used to believe: in the strength of love. in the purity of kindness. the triumph of good over evil. the light at the end of the tunnel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> graphic violence and gore. briefly mentioned castration. kind of dubcon, because Stiles isn't mentally there enough to consent.

**Ethan**  
Ethan was pleased that such a little murder had gone such a long way. Stiles had outright resisted him, cursed him, and fought him in the first few weeks, but now?  
Stiles was so perfect and pliant. Whenever Ethan gestured to his cock, Stiles would ravish Ethan’s cock with a wonderful blowjob.  
Stiles especially loved torturing the little humans Ethan gave him. Stiles would tear children limb from limb with a cruel smile on his face. Stiles would boil insubordinate wolves in hot oil, or drown them in such despair that the punished wolf would commit suicide. After Stiles had tortured or murdered a prisoner, Ethan would fuck Stiles over the blood of their victims while Stiles moaned in pleasure.

There was no longer any need to keep Stiles with him at all time. Stiles was unfailing obedient and loyal and no longer really spoke except to ask Ethan to fuck him harder.  
All his wolves had learned to fear Stiles’s name, behind his back, they called Stiles “The long dark shadow”.  
When Ethan entered Stiles’s mind at night, he realized that Stiles no longer dreamed.

 

 **Stiles**  
Months or days.  
Nights and weeks of which Stiles knew nothing,  
Asleep forever on a bed of the coldest snow in an eternal night, somewhere in the depths of his mind.  
Sometimes he heard screams, and angry, vicious laughter, but he mostly ignored the voices.  
He had walled himself away. When he sacrificed himself and drowned to save everyone he loved, he had opened a door into his mind and let the darkness in.  
His battle with the Nogitsune had mostly closed that door, but just a crack, a sliver had been let open  
and _It_ had come in through that sliver.

He should have known  
when he started to take pleasure in the dark spells, enjoying the pitiless cruelty, the subtle twists, the reciprocated pain. A little piece of him had been corrupted by the Nogitsune, his innocence forever tainted. And the slavery spell used by Elissa twisted his magic and mind to suit his master.  
Why bother twisting when evil was already there?

Killing the woman and her children had split his soul. In that second when Stiles was not in control, the darkest parts of him escaped, and freed themselves from the prison in which Stiles encased them.

Stiles knew that on the outside he was committing acts of relentless evil.  
There was once a time when he would have fought, when he would have rather died than hurt innocent men and women.

But all the people he loved had abandoned him. Derek had left and forgotten him. His friends failed to find him. He couldn’t even speak to his father anymore. The pain was unrelenting.

He used to believe: in the strength of love. in the purity of kindness. the triumph of good over evil. the light at the end of the tunnel.

It was all a beautiful lie.  
The tunnel never ended.There was no light

The pain never went away. He would never escape Ethan, never see his family or friends again. And even if he ever escaped, he had no idea if he could ever live with himself again.

It didn’t matter anyway.

Nothing did.

Stiles was so tired, not just bone tired but filled with an exhaustion ,that seeped into the marrow of his soul, a deep, unrelenting ache that he felt would never go away.  
If only he could sleep and never wake.  
>>>>  
Sometimes Stiles caught flashes.  
 _A mother crying, begging for the lives of her child. A man asking him not to cut it off, please, please, he hadn’t meant to sleep with the wrong woman. A young slip of a girl, barely into adulthood, sticky blood in between her legs, her eyes, emptier and limpid, gazing up at him_

Stiles really didn’t want to know about these people.  
He wished they would stop bothering him with their pleas and their noises.  
He just wanted it all to be over, to skip to the page of the book that said “The End”. Close the door on life, drift into whatever lay beyond that he could not see.

Stiles curled up in a deserted corner of his mindspace and closed his eyes against the voices in the wind.  
>>>  
 **Anna**  
Anna lie on the bed, her face to the wall,  
“You win Elissa” Anna sobbed, “Ethan turned him into a monster. I don’t even know if there’s any of him left anymore”  
“Stop sniveling,” Elissa retorted, “He was just one cog in the plan. Or do you want to give up so soon, when our work has nearly come to fruition?”  
“You’re soulless, Elissa. You betrayed the most sacred relationship between mages. that of a domine over his or her charge. You swore to protect, provide and guide him. There’s barely any of him left.”  
“If he hadn’t crumbled and given into the spell so easily, he would be fine. He has only himself to blame,” Elissa  
“How are you blaming him? He trusted you and you destroyed him. The wolves tell me Ethan raped him every day, and God only knows what else! I know there had to be another way,” Anna cried.  
“Look,” Elissa countered, “This will all be over soon, and I’ll free Stiles,ok? Stop crying.”  
Anna didn’t respond to Elissa. As the door closed behind Anna’s back, she made a decision. This could go on no longer.  
>>>>  
 **Ethan**  
Stiles lapped at the cooling cum on Ethan’s cock and then fixed Ethan with his newly blank gaze.  
They stood in a prison cell, but really it was more of an abbatoir.  
Bodies were strewn everywhere.  
A woman lay in the left corner of the room, on the cobblestone floor, her blue dress torn into pieces, her naked form underneath covered in cuts and bruises. Her eyes were closed.  
 _Something borrowed, something blue_  
A man was curled up in the right corner of the room, a spike driven through his head, is brains spilling down onto his cheek, blood staining the wall he leaned against, his eyes stared open in horror, in sightless witness.  
 _I can’t look_  
Another man, a werewolf, lie on his back, intestines pilling out from his stomach. His stomach was criss-crossed with claw marks. Stiles had cast a spell on him that caused the young werewolf to believe that there were rats running inside him. The werewolf had clawed his stomach out, trying to dislodge the imaginary rodents.

A child lay in the center, on her belly, her breathing even, and her face covered with bruises. She was very young, only about seven, maybe eight. It was impossible to tell.

Stiles finished the blowjob.  
But, of course, Stiles was not really Stiles anymore. Just a strange, blank creature, who lived to please his master.  
Ethan looked down at his slave. His slave was still thin, it really no longer seemed to eat or speak much. With deepening arousal, he traced all the claw marks on Stile’s skin, remembering with relish the way Stiles had cried after losing each memory.  
He had a perfectly trained slave now, unfortunately. He would miss Stile’s sweet tears.  
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t still have fun. Pushing Stiles to the ground, he ordered  
“Take off your pants”  
Stiles obediently undid the drawstring of his blood-stained pants. Stiles never wore button pants anymore; he had to be available to his master, at all times.  
Lying on the ground, Stiles fell onto his hands and knees.  
His master entered him, completing him. His dick was unflinchingly hard, as his body was jarred by the brutal thrusts.  
In between thrusts, Ethan crooned to him, “Such an obedient little whore. Look at you, being so nice as to kill these people for me. You love to please your master? hmmm”

“I live to serve you,” Stiles said in a deadpan voice.

“What if,” Ethan asked, “I told you to kill yourself right now? Would you do it?”

“How would you like me to destroy myself, master?” Stiles asked, gathering the magic up in his hands.

 

But before Ethan could speak further, a messenger ran into the room.  
“The emissaries from the Northern clan have come! The leader is asking for you,”

The girl stirred.

Ethan smiled against Stiles’s neck and gave a final thrust, coming inside of Stiles. The cum dripped from his hole, staining Stiles’s legs with sticky white discharge.

“Finish the job, dearest” Ethan commanded, “and meet me in the court after you’ve washed up. It would be unseemly to greet our guest covered in the blood of _humans_ ,” he chuckled at that last word.

The door closed.  
Stiles prepared to break the girl’s neck, which would be quick and almost painless, when he found that his fingers were bond with red thread.

The seven year old girl stood. As Stiles watched, her face began to change. She grew taller, aged more; wrinkles appeared in the corners of her eyes. Her black hair lightened to brown, her kind, warm, chocolate eyes stared into Stiles.

“I ‘m not interested in you. I need to speak to Stiles. Don’t move” Anna instructed.

With that, the slave felt a ripping red-hot pain that tore through his mind. He collapsed to the ground.

Anna appeared in Stiles’s mind and whispered, “Stiles” to the sleeping figure curled up on the ground.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's pretty short, but I wanted to end here.  
> The idea is that: Stiles has a little bit of darkness inside of him, the slave spell twists the slave to act and be the perfect instrument of the master, enhancing Stiles's darkness.  
> Things will get a little better for Stiles after this, but of course we'll have quite a bit of hurt/comfort to do before Stiles can actually be anywhere close to functional and even then.....  
> Hopefully, this should be one of the last scenes of gratuitous violence in the story. There's a little more violence in the next chapter, but not like this.  
> All errors are mine.
> 
> And please, I love comments, they inspire me to write more. Thanks to all of you who commented and kudoed me. Have a very merry Christmas.


	14. A father's intuition

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Sheriff decides he needs help to find Stiles, Stiles and Anna have a much-needed conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> no real warnings for this chapter

The Sheriff sat at his table in the dark, staring off into the distance and wondering if it was all a dream. On his table lay a spread of Washington State with a pin marking the location of any building that could be termed a castle.  
The kitchen pulsed with preternatural light as he waited,  
wondering if Dream Stiles would visit him again.  
He usually tended to see his son at least once every week, sometimes twice. But for the last three weeks he had heard and seen nothing.  
He knew, with a parent’s intuition that bubbled deep inside of him, beyond his awareness, like an underground spring, that something was horribly wrong with his son.  
 _Or was he just crazy?_  
If someone had told him a year ago, or even three years ago, that he would believe in witches and magic and ghosts and werewolves and dreamwalking, he would have laughed himself silly.  
If a man came into the Sheriff’s office and explained to him that, “I know where to find my missing son because my son dream walks to see me at night”  
The sheriff would have discreetly referred such a man to the mental hospital with a fake, sickly, treacle smile on his face.  
So, yes, the Sheriff was questioning his sanity.  
But he couldn’t ignore a deep part of him, deeper than logic or even the tidal waves of emotion that told him in the darkness of his mind, in a still quiet voice that his son was still alive and in grave danger.  
So the Sheriff put aside logic, and chose to believe.  
Rubbing his eyes, the Sheriff tried to think through the clues Stiles had given him.  
 _It’s cold. Lots of tree cover. pacific time zone. Magic._  
Wait, the Sheriff thought and re-wound his thoughts. Magic.  
It had never made sense to him why he never saw any signs of a struggle between Stiles and his captors. Even when he saw Stiles’s body, he had felt that something was not quite right. As a logical person, the Sheriff hated to talk about or even discuss the word.  
Magic……  
But then again, his son had been “dreamwalking” ( was that even a term?) to see him for the last few weeks, he wasn’t going to start rationalizing now.  
>>>>>  
Derek was drowning his sorrows in the dark, smoky space of the local bar. Alcohol reeked from his shirt. At 3 pm in the afternoon, he had already finished a case of beer. He and Sam Adams had become friendly after Stiles disappeared and then their intimacy had deepened after Stiles’s body was found. Derek looked at the smiling man on his beer label raising a silver flask.  
The man was happy…..  
Derek couldn’t remember the last time he had felt happy. He wasn’t even sure if his face knew how to smile anymore.  
He had lost his heart’s mate. He couldn’t protect Stiles and the bond roared inside his ears, with an aching emptiness, like every door ever short, the worst quietness in existence. usually when a wolf lost his heart’s intended, it was acceptable to commit suicide rather than face the pain of such an empty life. But he had a pack of young wolves to take care of, Scott and Isaac , Ethan and Aiden, Jackson and Malia, and Liam.  
So every weekend, he would come to this dive bar and drink, and pick up some strange woman, sleep with her, try to go through the motions, pretend a stranger could ever replace Stiles.  
It wasn’t working, his wolf howled in sadness every full moon.  
It was one of these particular days that Sheriff Stilinski walked in.  
“Derek Hale,” the Sheriff said, “I need your help”  
Derek looked up blearily at the man, “Whaaaaaat?”  
The Sheriff replied resolutely, “ I need you to help me find Stiles”  
Derek looked at the man with a dawning sadness. Poor Sheriff had gone off his rocker. “Stiles is dead,” Derek asserted bitterly.  
“I saw his body. I felt the bond fall into silence. I can’t bring people back from the dead, Sheriff” Derek replied crisply.  
The Sheriff fixed Derek with a hard stare, “I don’t believe that body was Stiles. I feel—I know— something isn’t right”  
“So, let me get this right, You want me to some with you to do something to find a son whose body is molding in the grave because you had a feeling?” Derek mocked.  
“Yeah, I’ll pass,” finished Derek.  
The Sheriff remained calm.  
“No, I expect you to help me because anything is better than sitting here drinking pathetically and yes I’ve seen the reports by other deputies citing one “Derek Hale” for another alcohol violation. So you can either sit her, like a lazy bastard, drinking and boozing, weeping over your heartache. Or you can listen to what I have to say and help me find Stiles if he is even out there, or at least help a father find peace of mind,” The Sheriff replied.  
“Either way,” resolved the Sheriff, “I don’t give a bloody damn whether you help me or not. I will do this with or without you. I need to be sure that body was my son, that there wasn’t some crazy foul play involved,”  
Derek looked turned back to his beer.  
The Sheriff sighed and walked out in disappointment.

A few minutes later, as the Sheriff climbed into Stiles’s old Jeep, he heard a voice call out,

“Wait!”  
Derek walked slowly towards the Sheriff.  
“I’m coming along. But only because Stiles would never forgive me if I let you get killed”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

So that was how the three of them, Sheriff, Deaton and Derek ended up in the graveyard under a full moon. Deaton finished drawing the chalk circle and Derek pulled open the casket.  
Deaton looked at the Sheriff and Derek as he explained, “So we’ll start with the simplest of unbinding casts. I’m just going to do a quick charm and see if there’s any magical residue on this casket. Whatever, magic is on this coffin will be cleansed away so that the truth can be seen.”

The Sheriff felt incredibly stupid as he used the chicken’s blood to draw a 5 pointed star in the middle of the casket.  
What was he doing here? An officer of the law skulking in graveyards late at night? Was he crazy? If this got out it would be really bad PR.

But the Sheriff pushed away that rational voice that told him he was crazy and held his breath as Deaton said the spell.

As Deaton said the last syllable, the coffin was surrounded by an intense white light that flared into brightness for a second and then they were all plunged into darkness.   
“What was that?” the Sheriff asked.  
Deaton’s brow furrowed, “It seems like there’s been some foul magic at play here, but I don’t see any signs of a spell on the casket”

The Sheriff went with his gut. He slowly approached his son’s casket and opened the lid.

A  girl lay in the casket, skin pale and translucent, strange symbols covering her entire face as blond hair spread all over the casket bed.

The Sheriff fell to his knees, tears brimming in his eyes, throat choked hot with a mixture of hope and fear.  
“That is not my son,” he said softly to the ground.  
“Stiles is alive” he declared to a shocked Derek. “My son is alive”

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

After they placed the casket back in the hole, and replaced the burial dirt,( which did not take long thanks to Derek’s extra special wolf powers), the Sheriff told Derek and Deaton everything over coffee. The dreamwalking. the visits. the clues he had been able to piece together.  
Deaton took a long blow on his coffee cup before sipping.  
“It seems like Stiles has been learning magic from an actual mage. There are very few mages left in the world. Emissaries, such as me, are not quite as powerful as mages. Being an emissary is like getting your associate’s degree in Magic, whiles Mages have Ph.d’s. More importantly, if the mage who is training him is anywhere near as powerful as I think she is, I should be able to use my sources to get information on where she is. The top 20 most powerful mages are like celebrities in the magic underworld. We find Stiles’s teacher, we find Stiles,” Deaton proposed.

Derek had taken a long time to digest the information that his mate might still be alive.

After Deaton finished speaking, Derek took a deep breath.  
“Actually, Deaton” , “none of that may be necessary. The information the Sheriff is giving us, that Stiles is somewhere in a remote castle in Washington, in a den of wolves, matches up perfectly with the descriptions of a self-styled “Wolf King” that is emerging and gathering power. The word on the street is that the Wolf King is ruthlessly cruel, and incredibly powerful. He has been slowly killing the inhabitants of some towns in Washington. That might be where Stiles is,”

The Sheriff looked alarmed, “Of course, the spate of “animal attacks” in Washington that have claimed 6 lives. There’s been a huge debate about whether it is good for the United States to have area of protected land for wildlife because of those attacks. I can’t believe I missed this”

Derek continued carefully, “The Argent , Gules, Aurorum and Vert families , the four largest hunter families in the United States are planning to attack the “Wolf King’s” stronghold in a week. We should follow them, and see if we can find Stiles in the midst of the chaos”

The Sheriff felt hope returning to his limbs again, “But we need to plan for this, right. We’ll need to figure out how many levels there are in this stronghold, where Stiles is most likely to be. We cannot just rush in half-cocked,”

Derek grinned ferally, “I want to rip the throats out of anyone who has been keeping Stiles prisoner for so long, and keeping my mate away from me”

Deaton pacified both men, “We need cool heads in this endeavor Derek, the Sheriff is right, rescuing Stiles will be incredibly complex and we all need to think of a way to find Stiles and get him out of there safely. First we’ll need to know everything Chris knows….” Deaton began.

The three men talked away the way into the wee hours of the night. As the men spoke with each other, hope slowly began to return to Derek’s soul; the tiredness he felt was continually a part of him lifted for the first time. He had a goal, he had a direction. His mate was alive and he would find him.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>  
 **Anna**  
Stiles was stirred slightly when Anna called his name, then curled more tightly around himself.

“You need to wake up, now Stiles, before Ethan comes”

Stiles’s answer was barely a whisper of a breath, “no”.

“You can’t say no Stiles. Ethan is using you, using your power through the slave bond to do the most unspeakably evil things. He kills women and children. Rapes men and women alike, hangs dead bodies of wolves in the halls like decorations. You are the only one who can stop him, Stop letting him use you,” Anna begged frantically.

Stiles’s voice became more solid, “ Go away Anna. You need to go back where you came from. I’m not leaving.”

Anna walked up to Stiles and slapped him in the face, her palm left red prints on his cheek.

The slap jolted Stiles from his complacency.

“What was that for?” Stiles asked.

“Because you just sit around here feeling sorry for yourself” Anna raged, “Do you think you are the only person who has ever been raped? My mother was raped and killed by werewolves right in front of me when I was six and Elissa was 12. Then the domine who was supposed to take care of us, enslaved us, stole our magic and abused us. I used to hear him beating Elissa every single day from when I was 12 to when I was 16, and I didn’t lay down and die like a beaten dog in the dust. I slapped you because you’re fucking pathetic, Stiles”

Stiles looked at her in shock, “Elissa betrayed me and gave me to him. What am I supposed to do? He owns my body. He owns my life. He's been taking apart my mind,destroying my memories. I barely know what’s real and what’s fake anymore, Anna. I’m not strong enough,” Stiles finished.

Anna gave Stiles a hard look, “I’m not going to reassure you that you are a special snowflake, or tell you that you have magical inner strength that no one else does. I’ll simply tell you this, Stiles,you’re a mage, you have to be strong enough”

Anna continued, “ As mages we have a responsibility to ourselves to the universe, and even though Elissa did lie about some things, she did teach you this, What is the responsibility of a mage?”

Stiles answered by rote, “to keep balance in the universe”

“Exactly,” Anna stated, “we keep the balance in the Universe. Right now, Stiles the universe is out of balance. Humans and wolves are killed indiscriminately. Ethan is torturing and destroying lives for his sadistic pleasures. As a mage, we have to safeguard and help keep harmony in the universe. So the question is not whether you are string enough, it is a s simple as this: Are you a mage?”

“Yes.” Stiles answered unhesitatingly.

“Then you have to be strong enough,” Anna told him, “Rise, Stiles,” Anna commanded.  
Stiles slowly got up.  
“If he hurt you this much, can you imagine what Ethan will do to other people, who can’t fight against him? You know that Ethan wants to conquer all humankind. In his ideal world, everyone you’ve ever loved, your parents, your family will all be slaves to a few powerful wolves. Do you want to just stand by and let that happen?” Anna asked.  
Stiles’s voice gathered in strength as he thought of his father, tortured or murdered, his friends forced into service, millions of other slaves living a life like his. “No!”

“Good” Anna replied, “So we need a plan”

Stiles pushed his pain and sorrow deep inside of him and focused on the plan ahead. Even if he did die, at least he would get one last revenge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, yes, the battle scene should come in the next chapter. But that's not really even the high point of the novel, I am finally getting close to the end of this flashback. Lol, did not expect the flashback to basically take like 10-15 chapters, but eh, what can I do?


	15. The Night Before

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter follow up before the battle.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Mention of rape, mentions of violence. honestly nothing crazy yet.

**Sheriff Stilinski**  
The Sheriff was getting a crash course on the supernatural. Yeah, Stiles had mentioned it, but he’d never really gone into detail about how werewolves moved or how to attack them etcetera, preferring to give his dad the general gist and leave out handy details.  
The Sheriff now had six guns on him stocked with wolfsbane, and enough combat lessons to last him a lifetime.  
The hunters and the Beacon Hills pack, which had now expanded to include the Sheriff, went over the plans over and over again. 

The hunters would attack from the southeast of the forest. The northern side of the encampment was heavily guarded, as that was the side that faced the town. But the wolves would not expect an attack from the southern flank, because the southern forests were filled with monsters and mostly uninhabited. Because Deucalion was at war, the encampment should have less men to guard it. The hunters planned on a surprise attack, during the waning moon, when the wolves were at their weakest. 

After creeping through the southern side, the hunters would release onion gas. For wolves, the sharp smell of onions was one of the most revolting things. Long time ago, the Gules family had distilled the smell of onions and concentrated it to 1,000 times its potency. Very effective werewolf weapon.

During the chaos, the hunters planned to storm the castle. Due to the Wolf King’s cruel ways, one group of wolves had already secretly defected from Ethan and would open the castle door for them. From there, the hunters would enter the throne room and it would be a melee for dominance. If the hunters failed, one specially trained assassin was poised to destroy the Wolf King. In the midst of all this pandemonium, Derek and the Sheriff were tasked with sneaking down to the lowest levels, the dungeons, where prisoners, and probably Stiles, would be kept.  
They would rescue Stiles, and carry him to the rendezvous site, where a helicopter would be waiting and get Stiles medically attention if need be.

That was the plan. in a nutshell.

But of course, there were contingencies. and worries and so many places where the entire plan could go wrong. But at least they weren’t going in without a blueprint.

At least that’s what the Sheriff told himself, hopefully.

Every night, the Sheriff whispered his son’s name into the bedspread. Deaton had said that he could call his son to come to him. But Stiles never answered.  
The Sheriff was more worried than before. Why hadn’t he tried harder? Believed his son’s visitations were more than just a dream? A sour feeling settled in the bottom of his gut, he knew Stiles was just not allright. He couldn’t tell you how he knew, but something was very wrong with his son.

 

On Friday night, the Sheriff, along with several hunter families, took two private planes and then fit themselves into five Jeeps, driving deep into the heart of the Washington wilderness. The hunters walked the last hundred miles till daybreak and then slept.  
The Sheriff slept fitfully, in the next few hours, he would know if his son was dead or alive. He would hold his boy for the first time in two years.  
Or his son could be dead.  
Anxiety knifed through his skin as if his veins were paper, _please don’t be dead. Hold on for me. I am coming._

The Sheriff thought and he prayed, the Sheriff didn’t really believe in a God, but damn it all, that night he got on his knees and prayed to a God whom he wasn't sure existed, a God who might be nothing more than the figments of his aching mind. 

_Please,Please, keep my son alive._

He prayed with every breath left inside of him, until the dawn broke, slowly rising from the heavens, winter sunrise painting the sky in brilliant red and purples, an explosion of yellow like the birth of a volcano.

At first light…..

He was ready.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>  
 **Anna and Stiles**

Anna spoke quickly, knowing that what she didn’t have much time before Ethan returned.

"When Elissa bound you and Ethan together, it wasn’t as master and slave because it is very difficult to use magic to totally subvert another person’s will like that. Instead you might have recognized two words she used….."

Stiles cast his mind back to one of the most earth shattering moments of his life, “inferiorus and superiorus”. 

“Right,” Anna affirmed, “the spell rests on not just the willpower of one of the parties over another, but that the “enslaved” or the second party truly believes he or she is inferior to the dominant party, taking on the dominant party’s wishes, beliefs and desires. And no one can make you feel inferior without your consent,”

“So”, Stiles looked up confused, “If I just had enough willpower or belief, I would be able to triumph and overpower Ethan? The power of my feelings would stop everything? You should write the next Harry Potter movie,” Stiles noted sarcastically.

“Not quite, Stiles” Anna responded with a ghost of a grin, “In order to gain your power back, you have to rewrite the terms of your own enslavement. Basically, you need a two handed blade, an athame, and blood from both you and Ethan. Then you say these words, “Superiorus no superiorus numquam. Inferiorus conversivio Superiorus”. But what makes this so difficult is that to re-write the terms of magic, you have to call the power of exusia herself, go deep into wordless magic. It has been done, but not by very many mages” Anna finished grimly.

“Why do you think I can do it? I’m just a new mage, barely trained with the ways of exusia, with a Domina who spent half my lessons lying to me,” Stiles said angrily, clenching his fists.

Anna walked over to Stiles and covered his clenched fists with her hands, holding his fingers close to her heart, then she pressed a feather light touch to Stiles’s cheek.  
As the soft imprint of her lips left his skin, Stiles realized that he was crying, he had not been touched with such gentleness in a very very long time.

Anna looked at Stiles like she could see something he couldn’t,  
something beautiful and shining in this kid that was tarnished with all the residue of monsters and madness.

“I believe in you Stiles” Anna responded simply.

The moment was interrupted by steps walking outside his door.

Stiles opened his eyes to the real world for the first time in a long time.

and gagged.

He was stained with blood, he looked at the horrific torture scene around him and knew the image would be burnt onto his retina for a long time to come.

Had he really done all of this?

Anna staggered to him, hands still feverishly trying to patch up her wounds with healing magic and handed him a silver blade, topped with a silver cross guard.

She whispered in his ear, 

“I believe in you”.

 

The door blasted wide open. Luckily Ethan was not there, but one Ethan’s werewolf soldiers.

Anna pretended to lie in a dead faint on the floor while Stiles tucked the athame into his sleeve and stood, covered in blood.

“The King requires your presence” declared the brown haired man at the door.

Stiles looked at him calculatingly. Then he nodded briefly. “I will be there in a few moments after I have cleansed myself of this human blood,” Stiles said calmly.

Inside Stiles was a mess of emotions, fear ( Did he truly have the strength to do this?); hope (Maybe he’d be free?); and horror ( What had he done under Ethan’s tutelage?). But none of those feelings showed on his face.

Stiles headed to Ethan’s room to change his blood sodden clothes. All he had to do was get Ethan alone.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

**Elissa**

Elissa hummed as she looked through her closet, choosing her most brilliant incarnadine dress. Today was the day all her plans would come to fruition.

She had been looking to murder Deucalion ever since she was a young girl, watching Deucalion’s wolves destroy the family she loved. She worked so hard to maneuver Stiles into position, giving him the right amount of prompting. Training him just enough that Deucalion would find him useful.

And in one fell stroke, her pawn had become a King.

But Elissa hated all wolf kind. Every one of the ruthless wolves who served and answered to Deucalion. She would not rest until she saw all of them slaughtered. As for her pawn… Stiles……

She could not say that she did not feel some regret over how she treated Stiles. yes, she had always intended to use him from the start. Orchestrating the rape to awaken his powers. Convincing Stiles to act as an assassin. Using his body to buy time and good will from Ethan, Deucalion’s blood thirsty second in command.

Lately, Elissa had started to feel an emotion she was quite unacquainted with. Guilt.

She saw how Ethan would use Stile’s mouth or body in court, spitting into his hair. Her informants told her that they heard crying coming from Deucalion’s room every night.  
Elissa knew she had destroyed the boy’s life.

Well, that was all coming to an end, soon.

Elissa had called in the Gules matriarch, the only one who knew the full extent of her plans. Together, she and the Gules family had worked to deal a heavy blow to all of wolfkind. She had already bought or found wolves who were willing to betray their new blood thirsty king. In fact, Elissa had known of Ethan’s cruelty before installing him on the throne. She knew that even though Ethan excelled in strategy, he had no sense of justice or mercy. Placing him on the throne meant that the wolves were weaker and it was easier to convince some wolves to become traitors to the cause.

Today, the hunters would storm into the castle, unimpeded, and it would be a bloodbath.

Good thing she was wearing red.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah.... It's really weird because I've already written like 6k words about Stiles's mental state after everything but battle scenes are kind of hard to write. I'll see if we can get up to speed and fix the gap.  
> Also, does anyone know how to make formatting a bit easier. The limited HTML is KILLING ME.  
> Every time you comment, Anna brings you love and kisses.


	16. Quick update

Got my files back, will be updating today.


	17. The peace you are looking for

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> See the warnings. Not for the faint of heart.

**Sheriff John Stilinski**

On the morning of the waning moon, they came from the southeast.

Yellow gas spread up from the southern forest, creeping in, a cat on silent feet. The sentries near the gat, the guardsman in front of the door, the wolf army practicing combat routines in the yard were all felled. Powerless before the offensive smell, the onion gas burned their noses and their eyes, overwhelmed their senses and they fell to the ground senseless.

The men appeared.

Their faces covered in masks, bodies covered in black pants and jackets, everything hooded but their eyes which shone with malevolent hatred and anger, like tiny silver daggers staring out through the mist.

The wolves, felled by the onion gas, were unaware.

The Gules. The Argents. The Aurorum. The Vert.

Silver tipped arrows and daggers flashed with the insignias of the different hunter families, dispatching the lone wolves who had been able to withstand the gas. Sheriff Stilinski fought in a red haze, seeing nothing but these _monsters_ who had taken his son from him. Who had ripped him away from the one thing he loved the most.  His gun was never silent, and the silver centered bullets flew towards the chests and the hearts of the beasts.

 

 _I am coming for you son, hold on._ He thought _hold on._

* * *

 

**Stiles**

 The palace had many layers and walls, are surrounding a center in concentric circles so while war raged outside, Stiles was on his knees in Ethan’s private room. His mouth, plush lips, open wide over the tip of Ethan’s cock, swallowing his spend.

The light flickered over his body, the naked flesh marked with scars, with whip marks with claw marks of so many things forgotten, Stiles barely felt like himself anymore.

The  cum taste lingered on his tongue.

Stiles hated it. He hated himself.

 

“Dress”, Ethan ordered Stiles.

Slowly, Stiles pulled on his drawstring pants, the tiny athame hidden in his pocket and turned empty brown eyes to Ethan.

 

Walking closer, he pulled himself unto his master’s lap, the lap he had sat upon so many times and breathed in his ear, “Maybe another quick one, Master?”

He ran questing fingers over Ethan’s body. As he did, he tried to remember Anna’s words

“I believe in you”, the look on her face when she said it.

He tried to remember, hold onto the few memories of the man named “derek” whom he knew he loved so much.

He tried to remember what it meant like to be a human and not a _thing._

 

“Disobedience?” Ethan tutted.

 

“I guess it’s time for another punishment”, he chuckled sharpening his claws.

 

Stiles braced himself and swallowed, “Please, Ethan. I am so sorry. Please let me keep my memories, please don’t take it from me today”

 

Ethan grinned, teeth flashing, “I love the sound of you begging. Begging to hold onto what sanity you have left”

 

His claws lifted, “Where, oh where should I place the next mark? Over here?”

 

He touched a spot between Stiles’s collarbones.

 

“Nope, too many scars there”

 

“or, here?” his claws tapped the curve of Stiles’s ass.

 

“but I like that part.”

 

“Oh, this is perfect,” he moved to Stiles’s unmarked arms.

 

Stiles’s eyes filled with tears, this more than anything felt like rape.

 

Like an invasion.

 

His head would never feel clean again.

 

Ethan plunged his claws into Stiles’s arm.

 

Stiles could hear the loathsome voice echo throughout his head.

_So which memory should I take now?_

 The time was now.

 

While Ethan was distracted, Stiles struck Ethan’s forearm with his athame, letting the blood of both mix together.

 

 

_Superiorus no superiorus numquam. Inferiorus conversivio Superiorus_

 With those words he reached deep into exusia.

 

Descending was easy, he fell into a dark black space of the purest midnight. He could see nothing for what felt like forever.

 

He fell in space for a time that might have been seconds, but feel like hours until he reached a surface, a flat surface. His body crashed into it, and he struggled to get his bearings for a while.

 

The snake with red eyes. His snake, the one he touched and claimed for his own lay there.

But where the eyes were once ruby, now they seemed like a dull orange, the last embers of a dying fire.

 

Golden scales fell from the snake like chipped paint.

 

My spark, Stiles thought.

 

He walked towards the snake and as he got closer, he saw the silver chain encircling its tail and  connecting it to some substance or thing he could not see.

 

 The snake opened its giant maw and spoke to him, fixing him with those pitiless eyes.

 

_Set me free. Please, Set me free._

 

And it hurt Stiles that something that was once so proud and magnificent, so strong and implacable was reduced to saying “please”.

 

Stiles was now close enough to touch the snake, close enough to place his hand on the snake’s skin, close enough to stare into the snake’s eyes.

 

He felt its pitilessness but also a warmth, a small sliver of fondness from something so old and  alien and strange.

 

_I will set you free. Spark._

 He felt the silver chain that encircled it, there was a clasp right in the center of the loop that encircled the snake’s belly.

 

_No one can make you feel inferior without your consent._

_I believe in you._

 He remembered the words, he remember Derek’s face, his father’s voice, every tiny squibble fo hope he had left.

 

_Liber esse mi fini, mi alma, mi scintilliam, liber esse._

_Be free my snake, my soul, my spark, be free._

 And the chains broke in his hands.

 

From above he heard a mighty rumble.

 

The snake, which had once seemed so pathetic, no was invigorated with a new life.

It roared and Stiles felt himself being lifted up and up and away into the sky.

 

His body rose from the surface, buffeted by an unseen wind.

 

And then his eyes opened to the world.

 

He was curled up in a corner of the room and Ethan lay stricken on the ground, moaning with pain.

 

Ethan slowly stood up,

 

“Guards, Guards!”

 

 

But no one came.

 

It built in Stiles, this power, this anger at what Ethan had taken from him. And after so many months of endless numbness, he felt nothing but an implacable rage.

 

The power spilled out as if it had been dammed before, flooding his system, his veins, he felt almost drunk on the frenzy of it.

 

“No one,” started Stiles, “his voice magnified by his power, “will save you now”.

 

He waved his hands at Ethan and uttered one word and the wolf lay on the ground, paralyzed.

 

“Do you know what you have taken from me?”

 

Stiles raised his left hand, “Kok”

 

And Ethan’s body rose from the ground as the wolf tried helplessly to remove the invisible hands that encircled his throat.

 

Stiles muttered another incantation and Ethan’s mouth began to foam with blood.

 

“Nadab”

 

Stiles muttered and an invisible sword seemed to cut across Ethan’s back and his face, leaving scars there etched in flame.

 

Ethan’s voice was choked by the hand around his throat and he could barely breathe as the pain engulfed him.

 

Stiles released Ethan from the choking spell and dropped him on the bed.

 

“Now,” he whispered, “I want you to feel what it is that I felt. I want you to know what it’s like to be raped, to have the sanctity of your own body taken from you before you die,”

 

Ethan squeaked.

 

“Really, Ethan,” Stiles whispered as he stripped his former master’s clothes, “is that all you have to say?”

 

“No prep,” Stiles chuckled.

 

“Try not to scream to loud,”

 

And as Ethan screamed, a knock came at the door.

“Your master is indisposed,” Stiles yelled, assuming it was one of Ethan’s lackey’s who stood there.

“Stiles, Open this door right now!”

Stiles knew that voice.

 

It could only belong to one person.

 

Anna.

 

“Abre” Stiles called out to the door, and the hinges creaked as the door swung open wide.

 

Anna walked in, wearing her trademark blue dress, her brown hair brushed over her shoulder.

She took in the entire scene in front of her with an open mouthed gaze.

 

“Stiles, this is wrong,”

 

“He destroyed me, Anna. It is only right that I have my revenge.” Stiles countered defensively, her voice jolting him out of his magic fueled rage.

 

“That’s exactly how my sister felt and look at what she’s done to you. To everyone?  Of course Ethan needs to die, he could kill and destroy too many of the people we love. But you can’t kill him this way and not be pulled into the darkness with him.”

 

In another time, with a different Stiles, this heartfelt plea would have worked. Stiles would have seen the wisdom of Anna’s words and stepped back.

 

 

 

But not today.

 

Stiles had just lost too much, seen too much. He was light years away from that sweet, 17 year old who bravely resisted torture in order to protect his friends.

 

He had nothing to lose.

 

 

“No, Anna. Get out of here. You don’t want to see what I am going to do to him.”

 

Anna walked out, “please reconsider,” she whispered as she walked away.

 

Fuck reconsidering.

 

Stiles raped Ethan, relishing in every moan, groan, blood spilled and sob.

 

Then he watched Ethan die choking on his own blood.

 

Anna watched him with a sad gaze and said nothing.

 

 

Stiles opened the door and walked past Anna, smiling as he heard the wolves howling to the sky, as they all felt the loss of their leader through the pack bond.

 

He walked through the halls, and saw nothing but bloodshed.

 

“What you did will never give you peace you are looking for, Stiles” Anna said sadly.

 

Stiles ignored her, walking faster through the halls.

 

“What happened here?” he said in awe.

 

“This was always Elissa’s plan. As I stated before, our mom was raped and killed by werewolves.  One of the werewolves who raped my mom was Deucalion.”

* * *

 

** Elissa **

****

Elissa was having a great day.

 

The sound of werewolves howling brought happiness to her heart.  The blood splattered across the snow like an impressionist masterpiece.

 

Some of the wolves who had been captured looked at her as she walked by as if they were aware she had betrayed them. Idiots.

 

 

She fought past the melee, stunning any wolf who tried to attack her until she reached the open court.

 

There Deucalion would be holding court and she could finally destroy the man who had taken away her entire life.

 

Stone corridors of the castle littered with dead wolf bodies.

 

Wolf pups squalling, mouths open, calling for the mothers they had lost. Elissa reveled in the destruction. In the pain.

 

 She threw open the doors of the throne room, expecting to see Deucalion standing before the mass of wolves.

Instead she saw her charge standing in the midst of an empty room.

 

“He’s dead, Elissa,” Stiles growled.

 

 Elissa stood in confusion.

 

Then she took in her surroundings. Anna and Stiles stood together, in a silent hall and Stiles had a malevolent look on his face.

 

She turned towards Anna with a look of hatred.

 

“You helped this lackwit destroy my quarry. That kill was mine!” she screeched.

 

“Be quiet,” Stiles said, making the signal for silencio with his hand.

 

Elissa overturned the curse and cast another in a language Stiles never knew.

Stiles found himself unable to cast once more.

 

“Idiot,” Elissa disparaged, “thinking you could silence me with the small amount of magic I taught you.

You will never be half the mage that I am. Do you think any of the paltry nonsense you suffered was anything near what Anna and I went through growing up? Do you know what it’s like to see your mother destroyed in front of you and then have to live with the magician who helped those wolves destroy you? You’re nothing but a sniveling weakling. Can’t do much magic. Couldn’t even feel exusia until my sister led you to the water and helped you drink. I was disgusted with you every day I taught you. This is not your business”.

 

“You betrayed me” Stiles cried out, “you sold me to that man, when I trusted you as my Domina, you..”

 

Elissa watched Stiles splutter coolly.

 

“I’ve been betraying you all along. The man who raped you the first time? I told him to do so in order to awaken your spark. You were always a cog in the wheel, a pawn in my plan. And Anna knew all about it,”

 

Stiles’s mouth opened speechlessly as he stared at Anna.

 

Anna finally spoke.

 

“Yes, I knew she wanted to use you. But not the lengths she would go to in order to succeed. Raping people. Destroying lives. Murdering free will, all the dark spells you taught your charge to make him more useful to Ethan. It is distasteful Elissa,” Anna’s body lit up with a blue light.

 

 

“And I can’t stand by and allow you to destroy others for petty reasons any longer. I am taking you the high court to stand trial for your crimes,” Anna’s power lashed out, enfolding her older sister in chains.

 

 

What followed was a magical battle that even to this day, Stiles knows he will never fully understand.

 

There were whispered words, screams, yells, beautiful and deadly magics each sister called from deep within herself.

 

Anna’s light blue magic was configured into twenty blue daggers that shot straight at her sister, Elissa’s red magic cleared those daggers with a whiplike projection.

 

In the near darkness of the arena, only the two sisters’s  battle glowed with light.

 

Finally, it seemed to come to a close. Anna had conjured a large blue scimitar about the size of her head and pointed the knife at her sister’s heart.

 

For the first time, Elissa seemed scared as she lay on the ground, at the the mercy of her sister.

Looking up, she searched her sister’s face and then

 

She smiled.

 

“Do it,” she crooned, “Kill me. Kill your sister.”

 

And Anna stared down at the sister she loved, who had protected her as a young child, whom she cared for more than anything in the world.

 

And hesitated.

 

And in that moment, Elissa pulled out  an ordinary human knife she had kept hidden in the pocket of her cape and stabbed her sister in the heart.

 

Anna uttered a cry and fell to the ground, clutching at her blue dress, the red stain spreading.

 

It was only then, once Elissa caught her breath, that she could appreciate what she had done.

 

“Elissa?” Anna croaked quietly, as Stiles looked on in horror.

 

“Anna,” Elissa whispered

And then she looked at her hands, uncomprehendingly.

 

“What have I done?”

 

Stiles had crawled to Anna’s side and started to sob.

 

_Anna. Anna._

 He held Anna’s head in his arms, so many images flashing through his eyes, her soft sweet smile, the smell of the coffee she brought him, the jokes they shared as she broke his wards.

 

_I believe in you_

 The words echoed and echoed in his mind.

 

Footsteps came. Elissa disappeared in a puff of smoke.

 

And Derek And the Sheriff found Stiles sitting there, cradling a dead body in his arms, murmuring over and over

 

_Anna. Anna. Anna._

Until they pulled him away.


	18. When you look at the shards of glass and only see your shattered reflection.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles suffers. and the Sheriff doesn't know how to help him.

Stiles was hurting and the Sheriff had no idea how to help him.

Stiles had never been an easy child to raise, what with all the werewolves, kanimas and other supernatural stuff his son seemed to get into. But despite all the awful things Stiles had gone through, his son had never lost his sense of self. Deep at his core, Stiles was still that adorable, sarcastic kid who saw the world in a way no one else did. Stiles was still,   _his Stiles_ , beloved son, whose thin figure the Sheriff enfolded in is arms whenever Stiles had come back from a dangerous or tricky mission. Even when he was sneaking off to Mexico to fight against an unnamed evil on an abandoned church in some desert, his son had always come back home to him. Unfortunately, not always on a school night.

 

But this person who had returned after 2 years spent with the wolf packs was no one Sheriff knew, only a creature wearing Stiles’s face.

 

Stiles had always been sarcastic and snarky, but in a funny, dorky way, the kind of way that made Stiles write a 10 page essay about the history of male circumcision for the wrong professor. But now, Stiles’s sarcasm burned, he used his words to hurt and wound other people, to keep them away from him.

 

When he clasped Stiles in a hug, after rescuing his son from the wolf pack, Stiles stood stiffly, not hugging him back. Even though Stiles had always pretended to hate his dad’s hugs, his son had secretly melted into them, accepting the comfort offered, the solace.

 

Now?

Stiles removed the Sheriff’s arms from his neck, “Get off me dad. Don’t touch me.”

 

Stiles was always the kid who could never shut up, it drove his teachers and classmates crazy. Stiles’s fingers were continually in motion, fidgeting, tapping his fingers against his desk, spewing a word salad when he was excited or anxious or scared.

 

But in the car home, Stiles had sat like a wooden stone, his face a painted mask, lips unmoving.

 

That night, the Sheriff tried to talk to his son, offering an olive branch, “Look, Stiles, do you want to talk about it?,”

 

“Talk about what?” Stiles snapped

 

“About what happened there. You said they weren’t hurting you, but then you didn’t speak to me for months, Stiles,”

 

Stiles looked at the Sheriff with ice in his gaze, a dark look the Sheriff hadn’t seen since Stiles was possessed by the Nogitsune.

 

“Yeah, dad, thanks for the fatherly advice, but we both know you suck at being a father. A policeman who couldn’t rescue his son for two years? And now you want to know what happened to me? What do you want to know, dear dad,” Stiles snarled out the word, twisting the sound into something unrecognizable.

 

“Do you want to know about how they put me in a dark hole for months and left me there to die? Or how they taught me how to kill and destroy and rip people apart? Do you want to know how many times I got raped? Or all the other things that happened because you took **two years** to find me? Is that what we’re going to talk about in our heart to heart?  Why don’t you quit while you’re ahead John?” Stiles sneered.

 

The Sheriff was split to the core by Stiles’s cruel words, each sound like a missile launched into his heart, he couldn’t believe his son had said such horrible things. His voice cracked and he didn’t know how to answer. He watched his son walk up the stairs to his bedroom and close the door.

 

He went to bed, hoping for better luck the next day.

Until he heard Stiles scream.

* * *

 

 

Sheriff watched Stiles the next morning at breakfast. His son had blue shadows under his eyes, which stood out even more clearly because of Stiles’s pale white skin.

Last night, John Stilinski had seen his son fall apart. Stiles had woken up from a dream crying, “Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. Please let me die”

When the Sheriff woke his son up, Stiles had knelt on the floor sobbing, “Dad? Is this real or is he in my head again? I don’t want to hurt people any more. please. please make him go away.”

 

The Sheriff hugged Stiles tight, murmuring “it’s ok, It’s allright, I’m here.” for almost an hour as Stiles cried heartbreaking sobs until his voice had quieted down to a whisper and he fell asleep.

 

The next day, Stiles clambered down the stairs, sitting to eat breakfast as if nothing had happened.  Only the Sheriff noticed that Stiles pushed the eggs around his plate without any appetite.

 

Stiles had never looked so tired.

The Sheriff had no idea what to do. He had dealt with victims of rape and torture but he had never expected to find his own son, suffering.

 

“Stiles,” John Stilinski began.

 

“Save it , John,”  Stiles said harshly.

 

“Scott, Derek, Isaac and Lydia are coming to see you, I was wondering if I could let them in.”

 

Stiles’s face was filled with fury, “No. I don’t want to see any of them. Tell them if they come here I’ll burn them all alive,” Stiles threatened.

 

“No,” the Sheriff answered firmly. “I need to go in to work today. Are you okay to be on your own?”

 

Stiles looked at the Sheriff with malice in his eyes, “I’m fine, John.”

 

The Sheriff flinched in response to the anger in his son’s voice. But he knew that Stiles, his stiles was still deep within this angry child, he had seen flashes of his son last night when Stiles was crying in agony, finding Stiles was half of the problem, he also needed to find a way to make  his son whole.

 

In the next two weeks, things did not get better, they only got worse.

When Stiles’s former friends came to visit, Stiles cast Incendiare and set them on fire, after putting out the fire, he told them in no uncertain terms that if he ever saw them again, he would destroy everything they ever loved.

 

Stiles stopped talking to the Sheriff, even his angry little quips were silenced as he became

 obsessed with something, he chanted and muttered under his breath for hours and hours at a time in his room. Stiles stopped even the pretense of eating and when the Sheriff called Stiles down for dinner, Stiles never answered.

 

The nightmares became more frequent, occurring closer and closer together. Stiles was crying from nightmares 5 or 6 times a night. Whenever the Sheriff held Stiles in his arms, Stiles would sob, “Kill me. Kill me please” and “I’m so sorry,” over and over.

 

One afternoon, Sheriff felt a hunch that told him to cancel his shift and come home early. The house was silent. Sheriff walked up the stairs to Stiles’s room.

 

The smell was terrible; metallic, the walls were covered in symbols written in blood. Stiles was lying on the floor, eyes unseeing, arms slashed to slivers, bleeding ribbons of red, surrounded by a chalk circle.

 

A book with a horned devil on its cover lie in the middle of the circle.

 

Stiles seemed to notice his father for the first time, he turned blank brown eyes on his father’s face, “She hurt me. I need to find her, dad. I need to hurt her back.” Stiles said in a slow monotone and then

 

“You have to understand”.

 

Sheriff called 911, cradling the form of his son. And he finally accepted a truth that had been brewing inside him for a while. His son needed more help than he could offer. He didn’t know what to do.


	19. Never let me go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles isn't doing well.

Stiles woke up to beeps and flashes of light. Immediately his pulse soared and he struggled to open his eyes. He found that his wrists were strapped to the bed.

“Was this another nightmare from Ethan? No. Not again”

Stiles struggled against his bonds, “Let me go Ethan, let me go” he yelled.

A man’s face swam into his vision. Stiles saw the man’s mouth move slowly, but couldn’t pick out the words.

Stiles felt a warmth at his back, and something warm tug inside of him. His mind calmed, the words the man spoke started to make sense.

He started to recognize his father’s face.

“Hospital, you’re in a hospital, Stiles”

Anger bubbled up inside Stiles, “Why the fuck am I in a hospital?”

His father sighed, “Because I found you bleeding to death in your room, with blood covering the walls. Because you don’t sleep or eat. You’re very sick Stiles”

Stiles knew deep inside himself that the words his father spoke were true. Ever since he had left the Alpha’s compound, he felt only brief moments of lucidity, overwhelmed by large spaces of darkness. But he did not want to admit the truth.  To admit that he needed help, would be to admit he was weak, and he never wanted to be weak and vulnerable again.

“I’m fine dad. Get me out of this loony bin,”

The Sheriff looked at his son with great sorrow in his eyes, “I can’t do that, Stiles. You need to stay here”

Stiles knew he had only one weapon left to use. Stiles let tears fill his eyes,

“Daddy, don’t leave me here” Stiles begged, affecting a childlike tone.

 

“I can smell fake tears, Stiles” a voice rumbled from his back.

Stiles turned around, shocked.

“Derek? Why the fuck are you here?”

Derek placed a hand on Stiles’s shoulder. “I’m keeping you as mentally stable as I can, through our bond. We found that when I’m next to you, you’re more lucid”

“What bond?” Stiles asked incredulously.

“All I remember,” Stiles growled, “is seeing you cheat on me. You know I saw it over and over and over? You and that red haired whore. Ethan kept replaying it, and it hurt me every single time.”

Stiles remembered the sharp stabbing pain in his chest, which cut through the haze of confusion.

His eyes started to water with real tears, and his voice came out choked, “Please leave me alone, Derek. I can’t be with you right now.”

Derek looked at Stiles in horror, “I’m sorry, I just felt so empty. I couldn’t feel you, it was like you were ripped away from me and all I was left with was empty silence. I did anything I could to fix that emptiness. I know it was wrong Stiles and I am so so sorry. I will spend the rest of my life making it up to you. Let me help you now, Stiles. Let me keep you whole.” Derek pleaded.

 

“No!” Stiles screeched, “What would help me the most is if you would just get up and walk out of the door. Now!”

 

Derek looked at Stiles in shame, but slowly got up.

“if that’s what you want, Stiles” Derek replied, as he walked out of the door.

 

As soon as Stiles lost Derek’s grounding touch, he felt his mind descend into chaos again, strange voices spoke in words he couldn’t understand. He stared blankly at the man in front of him.

 

“Who are you?” Stiles asked timidly.

 

“It’s me, Stiles, your dad. We were just talking a moment ago”, the Sheriff replied.

 

Stiles stared blankly as the image of the strange man wavered in front of him. Ethan’s face appeared in midair.

 

“No,” Stiles sobbed, “I’m sorry. Not again. I’ll please you better this time. I won’t cry so hard when you take me. I’ll make it good for you. Just let me sleep. Please”

 

The Sheriff looked around in panic as his son’s blood pressure skyrocketed, his heart rate escalating, and the beep beep of the heart monitors signaled the hospital staff.

 

The Sheriff took his son’s face in between his hands and tried to get Stiles to focus on his words.

 

“Stiles,”, the Sheriff spoke softly, “What was his name? What did he do to you?”

 

Stiles tried to breathe in between his sobs, “Ethan. He raped me. He beat me. He hurt me and made me do bad things. very bad things.”

Then Stiles’s voice immediately swung to a higher pitched tone, he stopped crying abruptly and grinned at the Sheriff, “And I liked it” Stiles laughed maniacally.

The Sheriff felt his stomach turn in revulsion and fear.

 

At that moment, the nurses came in. “His blood pressure’s too high. Sedate him.”

 

As the drug travelled into Stile’s veins, he saw his son’s eyes roll back as Stiles faded into unconsciousness.

With horror, the Sheriff realized he was relieved.

 

* * *

 

The doctor pushed her auburn hair back as she faced Stiles and his father. She hated having these conversations with family.

The man before her looked like he had aged ten years since she last saw him.

 

“Are you John Stilinski, father of Stiles Stilinski?”

 

“Yes”   the Sheriff responded, swallowing.

 

“May I speak honestly,” the doctor asked.

 

“Just tell me what you have to say,” John Stilinski responded.

 

“Your son is mentally ill. He suffered from some intense trauma, the likes of which I have rarely seen in all my years practicing. There are bruises all over his body, strange marks, which almost look like claws. He has PTSD, and responds with fear to certain noises, sights, sounds. He often disassociates when I speak to him, referring to himself in other voices or falls into a fugue. To be honest, the prognosis is not good. In all my years, when cases are this far advanced, the patient rarely gets better” the doctor said slowly, shaking her head.

 

“I know this must be a hard pill to swallow,” She continued.

 

“I understand,” the Sheriff cut her off.

 

“If I had any idea what happened to him while he was kidnapped, I might be able to help. But he can’t even carry a simple conversation. He knows his name only half of the time, forgets what year it is or where he is. I am forced to ask you whether you want to take him home or institutionalize him.”

 

“What would you recommend?” the Sheriff asked.

 

“Right now? Institutionalize him. I think he’s a danger to himself and others”

 

Sheriff thought of last night, he had spent the night listening to Stile’s cries. But towards the end of the night, Stiles had become more lucid, and he begged his father,

”Please, dad, don’t leave me. Don’t leave me with him”. And every time Stiles cried, he promised his only son that he would not abandon him.

 

He was not going to ever let go of Stiles again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm releasing some of my lost files, little by little. Since at the beginning we meet happy Stiles, obviously things do get better.
> 
> But we are going to go through hell first, and I do believe there are some things you can't just come back from.
> 
> I am sorry my friends.


	20. I need your help

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are some things you just can't come back from

The first days were not easy. The Sheriff scaled down his work to part time. Luckily, in a small town like Beacon Hills, the department understood, and after hearing about the horrible conditions in which the humans of the wolf pack were kept, the other policemen were only too happy to give the Sheriff the time he needed.

 

Stiles was catatonic for the first few days, he had to be dressed, forced to eat, bathed, washed, clothed. The next few days, Stiles kept slipping in and out of insanity, acting like two different people, vulnerable sad Stiles and manic murdering Stiles. Finally when the Sheriff was almost ready to throw in the towel, he received a God send: Derek.

 

Derek appeared by the door in blue jeans, with a simple, “My mate needs me”

 

Derek would sleep with Stiles at night, and with Derek by his side, Stiles was finally able to get some sleep for a few hours each night. The sleep went a long way towards making Stiles more sane.

 When the Sheriff needed to clean the house or buy groceries, Derek would sit next to and watch Stiles, to make sure Stiles didn’t hurt himself or others.

 

It was only fitting that the first word Stiles spoke was, “Derek? “, followed by an “I thought you had left me”

Then Stiles saw his dad watching him anxiously from the kitchen doorway.

 

“Dad?” Stiles asked questioningly.

Stiles pulled himself up on shaky legs, and walked tremulously to his father, “I missed you so much, every day”. For the first time throughout this whole ordeal, John Stilinski let tears fall from his eyes, “I missed you too son”

 

With Derek’s gentle influence, Stiles started to get better. At first, Stiles was too weak to dress himself, but after a while, he was able to re-learn how to put on clothes again. Stiles’s appetite was still weak, but becoming stronger.

 Sometimes, Stiles could hold a lucid conversation for longer than 45 minutes and only had a few short episodes throughout the day. Sometimes, Stiles was almost normal.

Those were good days.

 

And there were bad days,

Days when Stiles curled up into a corner of his bed and cried, days when he would not leave his room. Days when Stiles seemed like he was lost in a dissociative fugue and barely spoke to anyone. Days when Stiles lashed out at the world, when every word, gesture and movement was met with put-downs, fury, anger, and of course, magic.

 

Even at his best, Stiles was still too terrified to leave the house without Derek, he couldn’t sleep unless his father or Derek slept in the room with him. Stiles had to be reminded to eat. Looking at his nude body, gave Stiles a panic attack, so baths were torture and often ended with Stiles dissolving into inconsolable tears.

Stiles wouldn’t or couldn’t completely explain what had happened to him.

Stiles hated the dark, small spaces, sudden lights, and loud noises. The list was endless. And the magic was a completely different problem.

Every time Stiles was startled, angry or afraid, he lashed out with magic.

The Sheriff would find himself suspended in the air, or pressed against the wall or seconds from being ripped into two before Stiles was able to snap out of it.

During one of Stiles’s worse fits, Derek called Deaton out of desperation. In a low voice, Derek explained the problems they were experiencing to Deaton.    The next day, Deaton came to the house, bearing metal cuffs.

 

Deaton explained, “These cuffs will cut off the flow of Stiles’s magic, so that he doesn’t hurt you or himself”

 

Fearing retribution, Derek placed the cuffs on Stiles when he was sleeping. In the morning, Derek was woken by an unearthly scream.

“What did you do to me, Derek? I can’t feel my magic,” Stiles screamed.

Derek pulled Stiles into the circle of his arms and tried to ground his mate, but his mate pushed him away.

Stiles turned pleading eyes to Derek, “Take them off, I’m not safe, he could hurt me”, Stiles begged.

“Who is he, Stiles?” Derek asked gently.

“Ethan,” Stiles explained, “He was the Wolf-King. He bound my power to his,” Stiles began to tremble in the circle of Derek’s arms.

Stiles swallowed and then continued in a whisper, “He made me kill people and hurt them and torture them. I lost control of my power; I need to feel my power, need to be in control.  Give it back Derek,”

Stiles pleaded urgently.

Derek felt the mate bond fill with the pain of what his other half had endured, but he knew he had to stand firm,

“I can’t help it, Stiles. You lash out with your magic when you’re frightened and you’re a danger to yourself and everyone else. Remember the other day when your father accidentally broke a plate and—

“And I choked him,” Stiles finished the sentence.

“These cuffs will help control your power, until your mind is more stable, ok?”

Derek could feel Stiles’s resignation fill him.

“ok,” Stiles accepted in a tiny voice.

* * *

 

 It was Christmas.

 

Through mutual agreement Sheriff Stilinski and Derek had moved Stiles into the rebuilt Hale house because the Stilinski house had too many terrible memories for Stiles. Stiles was doing a little better.  Now he could hold a short conversation, eat every day, and deal with small crowds. He no longer hallucinated as much, though sudden sounds and movements still startled him. Stiles saw a therapist twice a week and Derek’s voice and touch seemed to help tremendously.

 

Baths were still a struggle though.

 

On Christmas Eve, Derek woke a sleeping Stiles, “Hey, Stiles, you’re starting to smell even worse than me,” Derek joked badly.

“Maybe it’s time for a bath?” Derek questioned.

 

Stiles shuddered, “I don’t want to Derek”

 

Derek  stubbornly persisted, “ it’s been almost a week and a half Stiles, you have to. Please.”

 

Stiles looked at Derek with those honey brown eyes, swollen with sadness.

 

“Ok, Derek. I’ll try”, he swallowed.

 

Derek held Stiles’s hand as they both ascended the steps to the upstairs bathroom.

There Stiles undressed, slowly, his hands shaking. Stiles wore more layers than ever now, as if he was afraid that someone would come and tear his clothes off of him.

He heavily preferred Derek’s T-shirts because e said Derek’s smell made him feel safe.

 Stiles peeled away his sweatshirt, and the long sleeved shirt, and his t-shirt and his undershirt. With each layer, his hands shook more, until he stood, chest bare, in the middle of the bathroom, staring at the mirror.

Stiles swallowed and gripped the sides of his sweatpants with twitching fingers, slowly bending the waistband of his pants and pulling the pants down to his hips, once he tried to pull the pants down further his breath was marred with sobs.

“Derek”, Stiles sobbed, “I c-c-can’t do it. Ethan used to undress me, and r-r-rip the clothes off me and I c-c-an’t…” Stiles caught a breath.

“Please  help me” Stiles begged.

 

Through the mate bond, Derek could feel Stiles’s sharp stuttering pain and distress.

 

“Shh,” he quieted Stiles.

 

He slowly pulled Stiles’s pants down, and stripped his mate to his underwear. By the time Stiles was nude, he was completely incoherent.

 

“No Ethan. Please stop. I don’t want this. Get away from me. No. No. No. It hurts. Don’t put it there. Don’t do it. It hurts. Please. not tonight. can we do it tomorrow? I’ll be good tomorrow. Ethan. Ethan. Why are you hurting me? I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything, but just please…... Please Stop” Stiles babbled nonsensically.

 

Even worse than Stiles’s abrupt breakdown, was the pain Derek felt when he looked at the scars.

 

Long scars from wolf claws crisscrossed over Stile’s back in an X.  Three horizontal lines on his chest.  A menagerie of bruises down his legs.  Every single scar was another lost memory.

Derek felt like crying, he felt sick.  He gagged, trying to be as gentle as possible.

 

Stiles huddled in a corner of the bathtub, Derek gently cleaned him with a washcloth, though cleaning Stiles’s back and penis were a struggle. Derek got the bath done as soon as he could, within ten minutes and then wrapped Stiles in a fluffy towel and slowly dressed him in clean clothes.

Stiles looked at Derek blankly as he was dressed and luckily, soon after, Stiles managed to fall asleep on the couch, wrapped in warm blankets.

Derek couldn’t sleep; he cradled the broken body of his mate and wondered how he could have let this happen.

If only he had gotten to Stiles earlier.

If only he hadn’t spiraled into a self indulgent depression when Stiles disappeared.

If he had thought faster, worked more quickly, sent out a guard to protect his only human and most vulnerable pack member.

If only, If only.

Closing his eyes, Derek could still see Stiles’s naked body, the awful sobs Stiles cried as he was undressed, the scars covering his torso.

* * *

 

Stiles tried to make his face smile as he opened the present Scott gave him. The newest Batman comic. Once, two years ago, the sight of the comic would have made Stiles smile. Now he could barely recall a whisper of that grin.   


“Thanks Scott”, Stiles said quietly.

 

Stiles couldn’t remember what happiness felt like. He had images in his head, of him, as this young teenager, who was still really like a little kid. A kid who loved his father, popcorn, cheesy movies,chicken…..

 

Stiles didn’t quite remember what love felt like or meant. Derek had marked a time out for him, 12:30 pm, which had been designated as lunch. And every lunch he sat down to eat, shoveling food that tasted like ash into his mouth so that Derek wouldn’t worry, because he didn’t want his father to knock on the door with even more shadows under his eyes.

 

Maybe this was love, staying alive in agony because _these people_ his family, would not let him die.

Kind of like Ethan in that way.

 

Even though Ethan was dead, Stiles could have sworn Ethan’s ghost was haunting him. He saw flashes of Ethan everywhere, in Derek’s eyes before he took a bath, in his day dreams and nightmares…

 

He wanted to be strong so badly.

He didn’t want to be this broken mess of a teenager? Adult? He had been taken when he was about 17, so he guessed he was 19 or 20 now. He didn’t want to be underweight, and afraid of his own shadow and sad so much it hurt to breathe.

 

He was supposed to:

 

Graduate with Scott and Lydia.

 

 Have stupid, adorable senior pranks and dances.

Finish the SATs.

Marry Derek. Study Criminal Justice or Law.

Come back to relieve his father and help work on cases.

His life was supposed to be filled with mostly sunlight and only a few clouds of grey.  Full of picnics on the beach and Arizona iced tea and laughter wrapped around everything. He and Derek would adopt and take in an adorable wolf cub and then maybe someday in the future, he would accept the bite and run with his mate and howl at the moon.

 

The thought almost made him laugh, bitterly.

He could barely sit amongst other humans, as unfamiliar places triggered a panic attack. He couldn’t sleep or eat, making him too tired to read or study. College graduation happened two years ago, everyone received their diploma while he was deep underground suffering in silence and all alone.

 

The world had gone on.  without him.

Scott was in college, planning to marry Allison. But he, was stuck in place, stuck fast in the glue, unable to move as it dried, entrapping him further.

 

His magic thumped inside him hollowly. He let it pound against his veins; it had never done him any good.

 

Lately, his few dreams had been of falling.

 

In this dreams, he’d sneak out of the house, out the door and run through a perfect midnight. Streets would be sleepily silent as they often were in Beacon Hills, summer crickets chirping from their hidden places. He’d get to Beacon Hills city centre and take the elevator to the top floor. No one would ask what a thin, underweight, young man who looked like he barely slept was doing in the building; no security guards would stop him at the door. At the top floor he’d open a window into a night pierced by razor sharp stars.  He’d open the window all the way, and the ground would call to him, softly sweetly, looking softer than it had any right to be.

And he’d jump.

For a moment, he would feel joy again, light crashing through him, as he tumbled, weightless, pulled unresisting by gravity. 

And he’d wake up, feeling his heart shot through with hope. Only to see Derek lying in bed next to him. only to remember that his family would never let him go.

 

 

If he had come back from Beacon Hills in a coma, his father would have to follow Stiles’s wishes, let the doctors pull the plug and his spirit leave the body it was encased in.

 

But Stiles was not in a coma, and his father continued to hold on to him, hold on and hold on, until Stiles felt like he was suffocating. Stiles’s life was a waking death.

 

_Eat. sleep. rinse. repeat. therapy. drugs. more drugs that didn’t work. more crying at  night. pain from his scars. nightmares in which Anna lies on the snow, blood soaking her blue dress. nightmares in which he is torturing someone but he is the one begging for mercy. sleepless nights. hallucinations. bathing and seeing his horrific body, his horrible scars. trying to remember a memory and reaching empty space. eat. sleep. rinse. repeat._

Stiles couldn’t do it anymore. But he couldn’t do what he wanted without help. So he tried to fix the grimace? smile for Christmas.

 

Later that night, after the Christmas presents had been opened. When the rush of people had left. After he and his father had said their last goodbyes. Stiles sat on the white sofa near the blinking Christmas tree, cuddled in Derek’s warmth. 

“Do you really love me?” he asked Derek.

 

* * *

 

 

Derek:

 

Derek blinked blearily as Stiles repeated his question in a tentative voice.

“Of course I love you, Stiles. You know that. You’re my mate, my other half, my everything”

 

Stiles pressed further, “more than you love yourself?”

 

Derek wondering worried about what had caused this prompting.

“Of course, yes”

 

“Then I need your help,” Stiles said softly.

 

Derek’s eyes opened wide. “With what, Stiles?”

 

Stiles seemed to be gathering himself together before speaking. Stiles took a deep breath.

“Please help me die”

 


	21. Severo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles finds a purpose

Stiles

It was morning and Stiles was packing his bags. Three bags were all he needed, three books of dark magic, a few raggedy clothes, some money, a sleeping bag, canned tins for when he was hungry and didn’t have enough money for food. Six bottles of medication. _Lamictal- the mood stabilizer._ Bupropion. The sleeping pills.

Derek was behind him, always, beside him, always. The bed they both slept in still had a furrow of his body firmly imprinted into the mattress forever.

Derek was asking him, begging him not to go, the words like so many gradations of noise before him.

 

Stiles didn’t hear Derek, he didn’t care.

 

He was leaving.

 

There is a little plastic tracphone in Stiles’s pocket. Tiny screen. Stupid flower home page.

Limited texts. Nearly untraceable. Black and plastic and worthless and cheap. Under the contacts, was John Stilinski’s number and no one else’s.

John because you didn’t call a person who abandoned you for two years, who let himself sulk in a morass of misery and alcohol instead of finding his only son, who was suffering, who was tortured, you didn’t call that man dad. You called him John.

 

Stiles had wanted to die and he still wanted it, with every breath and every morning and every day.

But he wasn’t going to get it. Derek wouldn’t help. Derek had said no.

 

Stiles still wanted to disappear from this world. This earth. He wanted the last two years to be erased from memory, Deaton had offered to do that.

But Stiles couldn’t.

 

In the midst of all this emptiness, Stiles needed a reason to be, to exist, to breathe.  To shoulder on through every painful bath, to carry the scars he was given. And after some thought he found one.

Elissa was still out there. After all she had done, after the ruins she had created of his life, after killing Anna.

It was time for Stiles to correct the universe’s mistakes, Stiles wanted to kill Elissa. Stick his magic enforced knife into her throat, watch the blood gush out from the carotid artery, see her struggle like a fish caught on a hook for her last breath.

And then his life’s work would be done.

 

He could kill himself with a gun, go into the woods to sleep forever. Who knows and who cared. It would all be over. Maybe he would find peace again.

 

Three months ago, Stiles was still crying over baths and clinging to Derek.

Derek was his sword and shield, strength in the darkness, proof the world had not completely abandoned him.

He trusted that Derek loved him, so he turned to Derek in pain, “Please help me die”

 

He remembered how Derek’s eyes filled up with tears after he had spoken, _“I can’t. I can’t do it”_

 And Stiles realized two things.

 

One: Derek would never stop thinking about himself. Never stop caring about his _feelings_ more than Stiles’s pain. Never be able to see beyond his suffering to be there when Stiles’s needed him. He wasn’t a rock, he was Stiles’s ball and chain.

 

Two: Derek was weak. And Stiles knew he could never respect Derek again.

In that moment, Stiles had said “ok”, never giving a hint of the sea change that occurred inside him, the turbulence that rippled inside his mind.

 

But the next day he was resolved to get rid of his ball and chain.

 

Stiles took his medications, all three of them.

 

He forced himself to get into the bathtub alone, muffled his tears, as he tried to wash himself. He forced himself to look at every scar, at every cut, and reminded himself of Elissa’s face.

 

Pretty soon he didn’t need Derek anymore, he anchored himself by his mission and purpose.

He stayed calm even in lights and loud noises by sheer force of will, by his fingernails gripping his palm so hard they left bleeding half moons at the base of his thumb.

 

Initially Derek and the Sheriff were happy.

 

Stiles was making progress!

 

They thought all the dreams they had for Stiles could one day come true. The rosy eyed glasses were placed on the bridges of their noses.

 

But then they realized that Stiles’s recovery had turned him into a darker version of himself, one that seemed to hold no regard for their emotions or feelings, his dark brown eyes watching them will careless indifference as if they were ants that he wished to burn with a magnifying glass.

 

 _Please talk to someone,_ John begged Stiles.

 

 _Please give me another chance,_ Derek had asked.

 

But Stiles had been newly hewn in stone, and his stone heart was not moved by mercies or pleas.

 

And so it was that on this day, the fifth of May, Stiles packed up his three bags, and a few dollars he had gotten from here and there.

 

Derek was kneeling on the front porch.

 

“Please, Stiles, please don’t go. I know you’re angry and I deserve that, but I don’t think you’re ready to leave. I think you’re still sick, I know anger is a way to process your emotions but please, think of what you’re doing, think of me,”

 

_Think of me?_

 

Stiles saw red.

 

“Like you thought of me when you cheated with that whore while I was suffering. Like you thought of me when you drank and drank instead of coming to find or look for me? Like you have ever thought of me instead of your own selfish desires?”

 

Stiles felt hatred. Inside him. He had never known what it was until today, never felt that red haze, that obsessive loathing.

 

“Stand up” Stiles commanded Derek, in a voice that brooked no room for argument.

 

Slowly, Derek got to his feet.

 

“ _Severo vinculum enterus”_  Stiles pulled an imaginary chain apart that he gripped in both fists.

 

Derek screamed as Stiles watched impassively.

 

“See, now you don’t have to think of me anymore” said Stiles calmly.

 

A man called Stiles from a brown car outside.

 

Stiles left, bags slung around him.

 

It was time to go. He did not look back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ended up taking my story in a new direction. Enjoy.


End file.
